The Moral Majority “targets” a congressman

for defeat because he opposes school prayer,

parents petition to have their terminally ill
child taken off a life-support system, a town
protests the activities of a church-supported
and tax-exempt business. Today’s news-
papers are filled with stories that reflect the
complex relationship of religion and politics
in America. Yet our history books tell us that
the constitution provides for the separation of
church and state. What does this principle of
separation really mean? How did it come to be
established, and how is it applied today?
In this thoughtful book Ann Weiss traces the
history of American attitudes toward religion
from colonial days to the present. She con-
siders the role that religious organizations
have played in the shaping of public policy and
looks at the thorny problems confronting us
today when the religious beliefs of some come
in conflict with the individual liberties of
others. Always aware that no one answer fits
all cases, she helps young readers to think
clearly about an issue that touches all our lives
in most important ways.

Af) AA
God and
Government
 ( God and governae pk: Poo 7
| Heiss, Ann E. Union Grove High School

| Le

God re
Government
The Separation of Church and State

Ann E. Weiss

Houghton Mifflin Company Boston 1982

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Weiss, Ann E., 1943—

God and government.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
Summary: Analyzes church-state relations,
considering situations in which government and
religion have supported each other as well as
those in which the two are in conflict.
t. Church and state—United States—Juvenile
literature. [x. Church and state] I. Title.
BR516.W434 B22 O73 81-17861
ISBN 0-395-32085-2 AACR2

Copyright © 1982 by Ann E. Weiss

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, or ‘by any information storage or retrieval
system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976
Copyright Act or in writing by the publisher. Requests
for permission should be addressed in writing to Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2 Park St., Boston, Massachusetts 02108.
Printed in the United States of America
VeTIOWS 8 7.16 Set4non 2,iT
For Kenyon and Kathie,
who have done so much
 Contents

‘al Church and State Today

Intolerance to Tolerance 9
Tolerance to Freedom 21
Church, State, and School 34
Taxes and Charities 45
Rights in Conflict 56
Special Privilege and the First Amendment 7 2.

A Question of Cults 82
AYER
SEN
YP Religious Rights Versus the Religious
Right 100
LO. Church, State, and the Future 124

For Further Reading 127

Index 128
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Preface

The United States Constitution provides for the sep-

aration of church and state. Or does it? And if it does,
what does that separation mean?
Growing up in Massachusetts, I never thought to ask
such questions. After all, we learned in school that
thanks to its earliest settlers, our state was the very
birthplace of religious liberty in America. And later,
when I attended college, it was in Providence, Rhode
Island, a city founded by separationist Roger Williams.
Later, though, I did wonder about church-state rela-
tions. Perhaps my interest was sparked when my
daughter came home from her public school with a
Bible presented to her there by a member of the Gideon
Society. Or perhaps it began when I took her to a
Christmas program at a public library and found my-
self listening to a passionately evangelical appeal aimed
at six- and seven-year-olds.
Certainly, my interest was fully aroused by 1977,
when I was elected to a term on the local school board.
That interest grew as we debated how government
x Preface

funds might be apportioned between the public school

and the town’s parochial school. It grew as we dis-
cussed the use of public-school facilities by religious
organizations. It became acute during the controversy
raised when one group attempted to force the board to
declare a Christian holiday an official public-school
holiday.
By that time, of course, I knew that separation of
church and state does not mean complete and absolute
separation. The strands of politics and religion are
wound together today, just as they have been through-
out our history. I began to think about writing a book
on the subject.
Then came Jim Jones and the tragedy of Guyana.
The Christian-school movement. Public arguments over
abortion, creationism, the Equal Rights Amendment,
and other issues. The power of the so-called religious
right. A book seemed more and more imperative.
Working on that book has been instructive. I learned
that the early settlers of Massachusetts were not look-
ing for religious liberty as we understand it and that the
Constitution never mentions separation of church and
state. I learned how complex church-state relations are,
and how tempting it is to change position from issue to
issue — to be a strict separationist in regard to gov-
ernment funding of religious institutions, for example,
but to be less strict when it’s a matter of regulating
cults that appear to be dangerous or fraudulent. Most
 Preface xi

important, I became aware of the paradox in church-

state relations. Government must be influenced by its
citizens’ moral and religious convictions. Yet it is, in
the words of Thomas Paine, “‘of the utmost danger to
society to make . . . [religion] a party in political dis-
putes.”
I. Church and State Today

Sundays in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, are pretty much

like Sundays in any other American town or city.
Ocean Grove families can get into their cars on a
Sunday morning and drive to church. In the afternoon,
they can go to the movies or watch a ball game among
neighborhood children. Youngsters may ride around
on their bicycles. In summer, they can stroll the few
blocks to the beach — the town is right on the Atlantic
Ocean — to enjoy themselves. Citizens can even, if they
wish, argue and quarrel with each other on Sunday.
It wasn’t always like this in Ocean Grove. Until
1980, such Sunday activities were illegal for the people
in the small community. Ball games and movies were
not permitted. In fact, people were not allowed to as-
semble in public on Sunday for any nonreligious pur-
pose. They could not ride bikes or drive cars — they
could not even leave their cars parked in front of their
own houses. Every auto had to be off the streets from
11:59 P.M. Saturday to 11:59 P.M. Sunday.
Ocean Grove’s strict Sunday rules went back to
 ~

7 God and Government

1869. That year, the New Jersey legislature gave the

Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association of the United
Methodist Church the authority to make and enforce
laws for the town. Camp Meeting leaders promptly
passed a series of ordinances to ensure that Sunday
would be a day of rest, one devoted entirely to religious
activity. They appointed police officers to enforce their
laws and set up a municipal court to deal with of-
fenders. For over a century, that’s the way things re-
mained in Ocean Grove.
Then, in 1976, the Ocean Grove court found a man
guilty of drunk driving. The man appealed his convic-
tion on the grounds that a court established by a reli-
gious organization had no jurisdiction over his case.
Three years later, the appeal came before the New Jer-
sey Supreme Court, the state’s highest court of law.
That court ruled in the man’s favor and overturned his
conviction. By its ruling, the court took away much of
the Camp Meeting Association’s authority over nonre-
ligious life in Ocean Grove.
The court held that the 1869 legislature had been
wrong to give the Methodist group the power to make
and enforce laws for the town. ‘“‘The legislature . . .
transformed this religious organization to Ocean
Grove’s civil government,” the justices wrote. They
criticized the nineteenth-century legislators for decree-
ing that “in Ocean Grove the church shall be the state
and the state shall be the church,” and pointed out that
 Church and State Today 3

in Ocean Grove ‘“‘government and religion are so inex-

tricably intertwined as to be inseparable.”
Church and state inseparable? Many Americans were
surprised by the facts about Ocean Grove. Most of us
assume that in the United States separation of church
and state is the rule.
In many ways it is. In the United States breaking a
religious law is not a criminal act. No public law forces
anyone to donate to religious causes. People can wor-
ship as they want to — if they want to — but they do
not have to. Decisions by the United States Supreme
Court in the early 1960s put a legal end to Bible read-
ings and the reciting of Christian prayers in the na-
tion’s public schools. In the court’s opinion, institutions
supported by federal, state, and local tax revenues
cannot be used to promote a particular religion.
In some ways, the separation between church and
state appears to be widening. At Christmastime, many
cities display a Nativity scene in front of a public build-
ing. Recently, though, groups with names like Citizens
Concerned for Separation of Church and State have
gone to court to try to prevent municipalities from
spending the thousands of dollars of public funds it
costs to mount and maintain such créches. Several suits
have been handled by the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU), an organization that has long sup-
ported the strict separation of church and state. The
ACLU has also been involved in lawsuits aimed at ban-
 ~~

4 God and Government

ning the singing of Christmas carols in public schools.

In some places, even without a court ruling, school
boards have ordered an end to carol singing.
Occasionally, separation between church and state
seems more like outright conflict. For example, the par-
ents of a desperately ill child may refuse, for religious
reasons, to allow the child to receive medical care. In
such a case, attorneys for the state in which the child
lives may step in and get a court to order treatment.
Church-state conflicts can also come up when a reli-
gious group engages in what is considered to be illegal
activity. On occasion, church members and _ leaders
have been fined or imprisoned.
Yet how complete is separation of church and state
in America, really? Belief in a supreme being is a cor-
nerstone of American life and government, and most of
us are so accustomed to that fact that we overlook it.
Every time we repeat the Pledge of Allegiance, we
affirm that we are “one nation under God.” We invoke
God in our patriotic songs: ‘“‘God Bless America,”
“America the Beautiful,” ““My Country ’Tis of Thee,”
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Whenever we use
a piece of United States currency, either a coin or a bill,
we proclaim that “In God We Trust.” Meetings of
Congress, state legislatures, and municipal bodies are
opened by a chaplain’s prayer. Chaplains paid out of
public funds also serve in the armed forces and in pris-
ons. Prayers are common at graduations and other
 Church and State Today 5

school functions. In the nation’s courts, witnesses usu-

ally take oaths on.a Bible. Most businesses observe the
Christian Sabbath.
Religion and civil life often mix. Public money fre-
quently supports religious observances. If a pope visits
the United States he may celebrate mass before huge
crowds in a public park. Hundreds of policemen, paid
out of the public purse, must be on hand to keep order.
After the ceremony, park workers, also public employ-
ees, pick up after the throng. When Pope John Paul II
was scheduled to stop in the heavily Catholic city of
Boston in 1979, city officials first proposed paying for
a $100,000 altar from which he would celebrate mass.
Eventually, in the face of much protest, Boston author-
ities dropped their plan and the city’s Catholic arch-
diocese paid for building the altar. The state of
Massachusetts did, however, pass legislation giving all
state employees a paid holiday on the day of the pope’s
visit. |
Local, state, and federal governments offer financial
aid, direct and indirect, to religion. Indirect support is
available through tax laws. All buildings used for reli-
gious purposes — from temples and cathedrals to sim-
ple one-room meetinghouses —are exempt from
property taxes. Direct financial aid comes in several
forms. Taxpayers help pay the costs of the nation’s
many parochial, church-run, schools. Public monies,
often in the form of social-service or medical-care pay-
6 God and Government

ments, go to charities and hospitals operated by reli-

gious foundations.
Just as government is involved in religion, so orga-
nized religion is involved in government. Throughout
our history, church groups have played a part in public
affairs. In wartime, leaders of most faiths offer prayers
for the success and safety of America’s fighting men.
During the Civil War, some clergymen prayed for the
North, some for the South, and splits within religious
denominations echoed the split within the country. Re-
ligious groups were also divided during the Vietnam
War. Many priests, ministers, and rabbis supported the
United States’ military effort there, but others spoke
out and demonstrated against the war.
Religious organizations have helped sway election
results. In the presidential election of 1928, Republican
Herbert Hoover faced Democrat Alfred E. Smith.
Smith, a Roman Catholic, was the victim of an anti-
Catholic campaign led by Protestants who claimed a
Catholic president would run the country on orders
from the pope. Smith lost the election. Thirty-two years
later, John F. Kennedy, another Catholic candidate for
president, was also the target of anti-Catholic propa-
ganda. Kennedy, however, was narrowly elected.
State and local laws reflect religion’s influence on
government. Liquor laws are an example. In some
communities, alcoholic beverages cannot be sold at all.
In others, it is illegal to sell liquor within certain dis-
 Church and State Today 7

tances of a church. Some forbid the sale of beer and

wine in grocery stores and supermarkets; others permit
it. The hodgepodge of laws is a reminder of the long
battle waged by numerous church groups against any
sale or use of alcohol.
Although church groups have always been involved
in our public life, the degree of their involvement has
varied. Sometimes it has been greater, sometimes lesser.
Today is a time of increasing involvement. Religious
groups seek to affect lawmaking in many areas. When,
in 1973, the Supreme Court ruled it legal for pregnant
women to obtain abortions, Americans opposed to
abortion began trying to get new laws to limit, or end,
the practice. Many antiabortionists carry on their work
through religious organizations. Religious groups have
come out in favor of other proposed laws — laws
aimed at discouraging divorce, for instance, or forbid-
ding the teaching of sex-education courses in public
schools. Some groups want to censor school textbooks
and library materials, or to force public-school teachers
to instruct students in ‘“‘creationism,” the story of the
beginning of life as it is told in the Bible.
Religious leaders continue to involve themselves in
election politics as well. Churchmen do not hesitate to
endorse — or opp—ose candidates for office on the
grounds of the candidates’ attitudes toward abortion,
homosexuality, and other matters. A growing number
of clergymen are urging their parishioners and follow-
8 God and Government

ers to vote as a group in order to elect politicians who

promise to turn their particular religious beliefs into
law for the entire country.
A great many Americans are dismayed by the kind
of religious involvement in politics that we are seeing
today. They believe the nation must maintain a solid
wall between church and state. Anything less than
complete separation, they say, violates one of our most
cherished national principles.
2. Intolerance to Tolerance

The story of the English separatists — America’s Pil-

grims — is a familiar one. The separatists held religious
views that differed from the official views of the
Church of England, the Anglican church. In the En-
gland of the early 1600s, Anglicanism was the estab-
lished religion. It was the state church; the monarch
was its head, and anyone who disputed its doctrines,
or who persisted in worshiping in non-Anglican
churches, could be fined or imprisoned by the king’s
officers.
The separatists, however, knew of one European na-
tion, Holland, that did allow freedom of religion. In
1608, a small band of separatists from the town of
Nottingham sailed across the English Channel to Am-
sterdam. Later they moved to Leiden.
The separatists found both religious liberty and ma-
terial prosperity in Leiden. But as time passed, they
also saw their children taking on Dutch ways, and they
did not like that. Determined to remain English, the
separatists returned home in the summer of 1620.
Io God and Government

Early in September, they began the long voyage to the

New World to establish an English colony.
Everyone knows of the hardships of that voyage.
Storms and fierce gales blew the Mayflower far north
of its planned route and the bitter cold of the North
Atlantic caused much suffering among the ship’s 102
passengers. Several died. Finally, sixty-six days after
leaving England, the Mayflower came within sight of
land. A month later, on a bleak December day, the Pil-
grims stepped ashore at what was to become Plymouth,
Massachusetts. They were weak and hungry, exhausted
and ill, but heartily thankful. At last they had what
they had sought so long: religious freedom.
The story is familiar — but not entirely accurate.
The Pilgrims did not find religious freedom in America.
They weren’t even looking for it. What they were look-
ing for — and what they got — was the chance to es-
tablish their own official church, their own. state
religion. The Pilgrims lived in the New World much as
they had in the Old, in a community where church law
was enforced by the state. The difference was that this
time it was their church and their state.
The Plymouth settlers drew up town laws aimed at
producing religious conformity. For example, they
thought celebrating Christmas was a sinful custom
—they labeled Christmas festivities “popish” or
“pagan” — and their laws reflected that belief. Christ-
mas was just another working day in Plymouth and no
 Intolerance to Tolerance ra

one, no matter what his or her private feelings might

be, was permitted to observe the holiday.
Strict as Plymouth’s laws were, they were mild com-
pared to those of nearby Boston, which was settled by
the Puritans in 1630. The Puritans’ religious beliefs
were similar to the Pilgrims’, but their way of life was
far more rigid. Unlike the Pilgrims, the Puritans
granted civil rights only to church members. People
who did not belong to to the church could neither vote
nor hold public office in the town.
In Boston, anyone who preached outside the church
could be fined and banished from the colony. Banish-
ment was a severe punishment. There were few towns
in New England in the 1630s, and banishment meant
going into the wilderness and trying to survive its harsh
conditions. A few years after the religious dissenter
Anne Hutchinson was forced to leave Massachusetts,
she and most of her children were massacred by Indi-
ans. Their deaths were the work of “God’s hand,” ac-
cording to one leading Puritan. In other cases, the
Puritans carried out the work with their own hands.
Boston Quakers were executed for their beliefs as late
as 1661.
Religious intolerance was a hallmark of nearly all the
early American colonies. Throughout the South, in
Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Virginia, An-
glicanism was the established religion. Virginia’s
“Lawes Divine, Moral and Martial,” proclaimed in
eed God and Government

1612, made death the penalty for speaking “im-

piously” of the Christian faith or for “blaspheming
[cursing] God’s holy Name.” A person who would not,
or could not, abandon the habit of swearing also could
be put to death. So could anyone who broke the Sab-
bath. Whippings were due those who showed disres-
pect to a minister, failed to attend church, or refused
to submit to an ‘“‘examination in the faith.”
In New York, which was the Dutch colony of New
Netherland until 1664, Governor Peter Stuyvesant es-
tablished the Dutch Reformed church as the state reli-
gion. Under Stuyvesant, Lutherans, Baptists, Quakers,
Catholics, and Jews were actively persecuted.
The intolerance of the early colonists stemmed from
intolerance in Europe and had roots that went back
hundreds of years in European history. During the first
years of the Christian era, paganism was the religion of
the Roman Empire, which stretched from England in
the west to the Persian Gulf in the east. For three cen-
turies, Christians were persecuted wherever they ap-
peared in the empire.
Then, in the year 311, the Roman emperor Constan-
tine announced that henceforth Christians would be al-
lowed to practice their religion in peace. Christianity
flourished and began replacing paganism as Rome’s of-
ficial religion. Emperors ordered and paid for the con-
struction of fine large church buildings, and worshiped
 Intolerance to Tolerance 13

in them publicly. Christian festivals became legal holi-

days.
For a time, Christians and pagans lived peacefully
together under Roman rule, each group worshiping ac-
cording to its beliefs. Early Christian leaders encour-
aged this spirit of tolerance. Freedom of conscience is
a basic human right, they said.
But Christian ideas changed as Christianity spread
and grew stronger. By the end of the fourth century,
churchmen were arguing that Christians could not tol-
erate the existence of any other religious creed. Their
reasoning was simple. Not to follow the teachings of
Christ was a sin. Non-Christians would inevitably suf-
fer the eternal torments of hell. Therefore, the church
had a moral duty to convert nonbelievers, by force if
necessary.
So religious intolerance took hold once more, and
this time it was the Christian church that was doing
the persecuting. What began as genuine concern for the
welfare of people’s immortal souls quickly turned into
harsh religious repression. Nor did church leaders per-
secute only pagans. Anyone, even a Christian, whose
opinions did not agree exactly with official church doc-
trines faced discipline. Men and women learned that
they must abide by church teachings and church laws
or take the consequences: financial ruin, imprisonment,
torture, death.
14 God and Government

The consequences might be meted out by religious

leaders, but they were equally likely to come from the
authorities of the state. Europe’s secular rulers — its
kings, princes, and dukes — showed themselves willing
to back up church authority with all the power at their
command. Again, their reasoning was simple. The state
was charged with punishing those who committed
crimes like theft and murder, crimes that affect the
earthly body. But religious crimes like blasphemy and
heresy (denying the truth of church teachings) can de-
stroy the very soul itself, they believed, and are there-
fore worse even than murder. No wonder governments
were eager to help stamp them out.
At the same time that secular governments were en-
forcing church laws, the church was lending its moral
authority to the kings and queens of Europe. Corona-
tions were religious ceremonies, and rulers made it
clear that they governed by divine right. Churchmen,
from mighty popes and cardinals to humble village
priests, supported the rulers’ claims and involved them-
selves deeply in national and international politics.
The union between church and state strengthened
both. Obedience to God was obedience to the king and
vice versa. Disobedience to either meant punishment on
earth and throughout all eternity. Religious dissent was
also treason. Taxes collected by the king paid for
church, as well as court, expenses. Kings grew rich and
 Intolerance to Tolerance 15

so did members of the clergy. For centuries, the Church

of Rome, the Catholic church, dominated European life
and European politics.
Yet changes were on the way. In about 1380, an En-
glish priest named John Wyclif translated the Bible into
English, making it directly available to people who
could not read or understand Latin. Shortly afterward,
the Czech priest John Huss translated some of Wyclif’s
own writings into his native tongue. The idea that or-
dinary men and women should be able to read Christ’s
teachings and apply them to their own lives was grow-
ing. Then, in 1517, Martin Luther publicly attacked
the Catholic church by nailing a list of grievances to
the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. The
Protestant Reformation had begun.
The Reformation was not one movement, but sev-
eral. In Germany, Luther’s ideas led to the formation
of a Lutheran church. In Geneva, Switzerland, John
Calvin founded Calvinism, a sect that deeply influenced
the English and American Puritans. Scottish John Knox
was responsible for the beginnings of Presbyterianism.
In England, King Henry VIII broke with the Church of
Rome and established the Church of England in its
place.
Although the leaders of the various Protestant sects
rejected many of Catholicism’s teachings and practices,
few questioned one basic assumption of the Catholic
16 God and Government

church. That was the idea that church and state must
work hand in hand to enforce both religious and civil
law.
Some Protestants took this idea even further. In Ge-
neva, Calvin set up a strict church-state, or theocracy.
(Theocracy comes from the Greek words for ‘““God” and
“rule.”) Calvin believed that if a community fails to
obey God’s laws it brings the wrath of the Almighty
down upon itself. A community that lives in harmony
with God’s will, on the other hand, can expect the
blessings of peace and prosperity. Therefore, Calvin
concluded, for its own good the state must never tol-
erate the slightest religious dissent. Only if secular au-
thorities, as well as religious ones, persecute dissenters,
can they ensure a good and prosperous life for all. Or,
as Calvin put it, ““The punishments executed upon false
prophets, and seducing teachers, do bring down the
showers of God’s blessings upon the civil state.”
This notion — that civil government thrives with re-
ligious intolerance — came to America with many of
its early settlers, and helps explain why there was so
little tolerance in the colonies. Still, not all who came
to the New World shared Calvin’s point of view about
church-state relations. One person who did not was a
young separatist minister named Roger Williams.
Williams arrived in Plymouth in the year 1631, and
promptly began quarreling with the authorities in Bos-
ton. Williams criticized the Puritans on two counts: for
 Intolerance to Tolerance 17

failing to break utterly with the Church of England as

the separatists had, and for treating the Massachusetts
Indians unfairly. But what really enraged the Puritans
was Williams’s contention that church and state should
operate quite apart from one another.
In Williams’s view, God created two separate and
distinct spheres of life. The world of Nature is the po-
litical, civil sphere. The world of the Spirit is the reli-
gious one. The two can never mix.
This belief led Williams to a further conclusion. Men
and women must be free to worship as they please. If
Nature and Spirit are separate, religious matters lie
strictly between individuals and their God. No out-
sider, neither king nor governor nor minister, can in-
terfere.
To the Puritans, who had deliberately patterned Bos-
ton after John Calvin’s theocratic Geneva, Williams’s
views were sinful and dangerous. They ordered him to
back down, but Williams would not. The quarrel grew.
It came to a head in 1634. By then, New England’s
Indians were beginning to ally themselves with the
French in Canada and to threaten English settlements.
Fearful that some of their people might side with the
French and Indians, Boston authorities ordered every-
one in Massachusetts to take an oath of loyalty.
Williams refused. For the civil government to require
the swearing of an oath in the name of God was to mix
the natural world with the world of the spirit. Williams
18 God and Government

maintained that no government had the right to force

such a religious action upon anyone.
The Puritans’ response was to put Williams on trial
before the General Court of Massachusetts. The court
pronounced sentence of banishment in the fall of 1635,
and in January Williams fled south to the shores of
Narragansett Bay. There he established what is now
Providence, Rhode Island.
Williams called Providence his “‘lively experiment.”
He wanted to demonstrate that men and women of dif-
ferent religions could live and work together in har-
mony. Even “‘popish and Jewish consciences” were
welcome in Providence, and it was just a few miles
away, in Newport, that the country’s first synagogue
was built.
In his determination to separate church from state,
Roger Williams was ahead of his time. It would be de-
cades before most other Americans adopted his ideas
about religious freedom and began loosening the ties
between religion and government.
Massachusetts did not get around to granting _reli-
gious freedom to “‘all Christians (except Papists)’’ until
1691. What that boiled down to was religious freedom
for Protestants only. Religious laws in Connecticut and
New Hampshire echoed those of Massachusetts.
Tolerance was greater in New York. When the En-
glish Duke of York took over the colony from the
Dutch, he gave each town the power to choose its
 Intolerance to Tolerance 19

own — Protestant — minister. The ministers were

paid, and church buildings erected, from funds col-
lected by secular authorities. Catholics and Jews were
permitted to live and worship in New York, but unlike
Protestants, they had to bear their own religious ex-
penses. Catholics could not become citizens unless they
renounced their allegiance to the pope in Rome.
Pennsylvania, founded by the Quaker William Penn,
was likewise more tolerant than most of New England.
Under the constitution Penn wrote in 1676, Jews and
other non-Christians could live within the colony but
could not vote or hold office. Those rights were re-
served for “‘persons who profess to believe in Jesus
Christ.”
Maryland, often cited for its tolerance, was not ac-
tually as liberal as many suppose. The colony’s original
charter demanded that residents believe in the Trinity
of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Maryland was founded by a Catholic, George Calvert,
Lord Baltimore, and this Trinitarian formula opened
the door to both Catholics and Protestants. However,
it excluded Jews, atheists, and unitarian Christians
(who believe that God exists as a single being). Within
a few years, Catholics, too, were excluded from Mary-
land. In 1688, Anglicanism became the colony’s official
religion and Catholic settlers were no longer permitted
to enter Maryland. Catholics already living in the col-
ony were not allowed to worship there in public.
20 God and Government

Anglicanism was the established religion throughout

the Southern colonies. Its ministers were government
employees. Their salaries were paid out of tax reve-
nues, and many received valuable land grants from the
king’s officers. Dissenters were treated harshly. In Vir-
ginia, up until the 1770s, Baptist preachers could be
arrested, whipped, and fined. Some were imprisoned
and kept on a diet of bread and water. Virginians who
denied the Trinity could be thrown into jail and their
children taken from them. In North Carolina and
South Carolina, people were required to agree that the
Bible is divinely inspired, and South Carolina also en-
forced a belief in heaven and hell.
That was the picture in the colonies on the eve of the
American Revolution. Tolerance was widespread, al-
though some places were more tolerant than others.
But nowhere, except in Rhode Island, was there true
religious liberty or real separation of church and state.
3. Tolerance to Freedom

The American Revolution began in 1775 with the bat-

tle of Lexington and Concord and ended six and a half
years later with the surrender of General Charles Corn-
wallis at Yorktown. The formal peace treaty between
England and the new United States was signed on Feb-
ruary 3, 1783. The thirteen colonies had become the
thirteen states.
Thirteen not-very-united states. While they were
fighting the English, the states shared a vital common
goal. Cooperation was absolutely necessary. But with
the war over, the states began going their separate
ways, each one acting in its own selfish interests.
New York placed heavy taxes on ships from Con-
necticut and New Jersey. New Jersey struck back by
taxing a New York lighthouse. Virginia and Maryland
bickered about oyster fishing in Chesapeake Bay. Vir-
ginia also carried on a running argument with Pennsyl-
vania and Delaware over their use of Virginia waters.
By 1786, it seemed possible that the United States
might collapse into complete disunity. It was obvious
22 God and Government

that the nation needed a central government strong

enough to bind the states together and make them
work as one country.
So, in May 1787, representatives from the states
gathered in Philadelphia to begin writing a federal con-
stitution. For four months, the delegates to the Consti-
tutional Convention discussed how Americans would
choose their leaders, who would be permitted to serve
in Congress, what powers the president should have,
how the courts would work — and what place religion
would take in the new government.
From the start, it was clear that the day of official
religions and government intolerance was just about
over in America. Of the fifty-five convention delegates,
an overwhelming majority opposed the setting up of an
official national church.
There was a sound practical reason for this. By 1787
America was already a land of many faiths. True, most
peopie were Protestants (of a population of approxi-
mately four million, about twenty-five thousand were
Catholic and fewer than ten thousand Jewish), but
America’s Protestant sects covered a wide range, from
high-church Anglicanism to the simplicity of the Men-
nonites and Quakers. Any attempt to turn a single sect
into the official church would surely have led to blood-
shed and civil war.
But the delegates favored religious liberty and sepa-
ration of church and state for more than practical rea-
 Tolerance to Freedom 23

sons. Many deeply believed that all men (though not

women and not Indians or black slaves) are born with
a natural right to freedom of conscience. Freedom of
conscience is a God-given right and cannot be taken
away by any law of man. This belief led the delegates
to reject religious intolerance — and religious tolerance
as well.
That sounds like a contradiction, but it is not. The
word tolerance comes from a Latin word that suggests
something that must be borne or endured. The dele-
gates knew that when a government endures religious
dissent, or bears up under the presence of Quakers,
Catholics, Jews, Mohammedans, or atheists, its people
are not truly enjoying freedom of religion. After all,
what seems tolerable at one time may not at another,
and a state that permits dissent one year may not allow
it the next. Tolerance offered by a government can be
taken away by that government. As one delegate,
James Madison of Virginia, noted, “The right of every
man is to liberty — not toleration.” It was liberty —
religious and political — that the men in Philadelphia
were determined to preserve.
One question concerning religion came up early in
the convention proceedings, when Benjamin Franklin
of Pennsylvania suggested that “‘henceforth prayers im-
ploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on
our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morn-
ing before we proceed to business.” Franklin’s words
24 God and Government

were received in silence. No one wanted to embarrass

the eighty-one-year-old statesman, or to hurt his feel-
ings, but few of the delegates wanted daily prayers,
either. They adjourned without acting on the motion.
The delegates’ desire to keep formal religion apart
from government was apparent throughout the con-
vention. Whereas the Declaration of Independence re-
fers to ‘‘Nature’s God,” the “‘Creator,”’ the ‘““Supreme
Judge of the World,” and “divine Providence,” the
Constitution makes no mention of God whatsoever
(unless you count the phrase “In the year of our Lord
one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven’’). The
omission was not accidental but deliberate.
The delegates also took care to see that no one
would be barred from holding federal office because of
religious convictions. According to the third paragraph
of Article VI, ‘““No religious test shall ever be required
as a qualification to any office or public trust under the
United States.”
This clause was the work of Charles Pinckney of
South Carolina. Pinckney feared that without it, people
of certain faiths might be kept from participating in the
federal government as they were in the governments of
several states. His proposal got the support of James
Madison, who argued that if the clause were adopted,
no one could ever claim that religious tests were ac-
ceptable because they were not specifically forbidden.
 Tolerance to Freedom = 25

The clause went into the Constitution with little de-

bate.
Another of Pinckney’s motions fared less well. His
proposal for a clause to forbid congressional interfer-
ence in religious matters won almost no backers.
Few delegates thought such a clause was needed.
James Madison believed it was so obvious government
should stay out of religious affairs that it did not need
saying. A New York delegate, Alexander Hamilton,
went further, suggesting it might be dangerous to in-
clude Pinckney’s proposed clause. Forbidding the gov-
ermment to act in one way might create the impression
that it was permitted to act in another, slightly differ-
ent way, Hamilton warned. Congress, for instance,
might assume that although it could not get involved
in religious disputes, it could legislate certain religious
observances. This argument carried the day.
Some, however, continued to doubt the wisdom of
leaving a freedom-of-religion clause out of the Consti-
tution. When the convention finished its work and the
Constitution was ready for signing, Virginian George
Mason balked. He would not put his name to a docu-
ment that did not guarantee religious liberty and the
separation of church and state. These principles needed
to be spelled out in the Constitution, Mason believed,
not just implied in it.
As it turned out, the American people agreed with
 -

26 God and Government

Mason. When the Constitution went to the states to be

ratified — formally agreed to — several states hesi-
tated. They were reluctant to adopt a constitution that
made no provision for freedom of religion and other
fundamental freedoms. Two states, Rhode Island and
North Carolina, refused outright to ratify. Six others
ratified but simultaneously submitted proposals for a
bill of rights to guarantee religious liberty, freedom of
speech, the right to a fair trial, and so on. Thomas Jef-
ferson, who was out of the country and did not take
part in the Constitutional Convention, sent his friend
Madison a letter about his reaction to the Constitution.
After praising much of it, Jefferson went on, “I will
now add what I do not like. First, the omission of a
bill of rights providing clearly . . . for freedom of re-
lizgion <2 7
Despite the doubts, nine states did ratify and the
Constitution went into effect on March 4, 1789.
George Washington was sworn in as president and the
members of the first Congress took their seats. Right
away they began working on amending the Constitu-
tion by adding a bill of rights.
It was Congressman James Madison, convinced by
now that a bill of rights really was needed, who wrote
its first draft. He wasted no time in addressing the
question of religious rights. The opening words of the
First Amendment, ‘“‘Congress shall make no law re-
specting an establishment of religion,” were intended
 Tolerance to Freedom = 2.7

to guarantee the separation of church and state. The

next words, “‘or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”
aim to ensure the right of all Americans to worship
according to their individual beliefs. The amendment
goes on to guarantee freedom of speech and of the
press; freedom to assemble peacefully; and freedom to
take action against government injustice, to sue for
“redress of grievances.”’ By linking these various free-
doms in a single amendment, the nation’s leaders dem-
onstrated their conviction that political and religious
liberty are two sides of the same coin and that neither
one can exist without the other.
Congress passed the Bill of Rights on September 25,
1789, and immediately sent it to the states. Ratification
was quick, and the bill became part of the Constitution
in December.
But ratification did not end the debate over the First
Amendment. For nearly two centuries, Americans have
disagreed about what the amendment actually says
about religious freedom and the separation of church
and government. They have argued —are still argu-
ing — about what the men who framed the amendment
intended it to accomplish.
One argument centers on the phrase, or rather the
missing phrase, separation of church and state. No-
where in the amendment, or in the Constitution as a
whole, do these words appear.
Some argue that their absence shows the men who
28 God and Government

wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights didn’t

really want separation at all. One twentieth-century
writer, James M. O’Neill of Brooklyn College, author
of books on religion and the Constitution, has called
the separation principle “spurious.” “There is no such
great American principle and there never has been,”
O’Neill wrote. J. Howard McGrath, United States at-
torney general under President Harry S Truman, de-
clared that when the Supreme Court made legal
decisions in favor of separation, it “distorted”’ the First
Amendment. Supreme Court Justice William O. Doug-
las felt that ‘“‘the First Amendment . . . does not say
that in every and all respects there shall be a separation
of Church and State.”’ More recently, another member
of the Court, Justice William H. Rehnquist, wrote that
the First Amendment does not require the “insulation”
of government institutions, such as schools, from
church influences.
Does the omission of the words separation of church
and state actually mean that separation was not what
the Founding Fathers had in mind? Of course not, an-
swer most American historians, lawyers, religious lead-
ers, and political scientists. They point to other
“missing phrases” in the constitution. There’s no ref-
erence to a bill of rights, for instance, and the words
fair trial do not appear. Yet we have a bill of rights,
and people accused of crimes have a constitutional
right to a fair trial.
 Tolerance to Freedom = 29

It was Thomas Jefferson who first used the term sep-

aration of church and state. Writing to a group of Con-
necticut Baptists in 1801, Jefferson referred to his
“sovereign reverence” for the Americans who adopted
the First Amendment, “‘thus building a wall of separa-
tion between church and state.”’ Although Jefferson did
not take part in writing the Constitution and the Bill
of Rights, he was in close touch with the men who did,
and he knew what was in their minds. The First
Amendment calls for separation, even though it does
not use the word. ©
Other arguments about the First Amendment con-
cern a word that is in the amendment. That word is
Congress. The First Amendment is the only one in the
Bill of Rights that mentions Congress. The other nine
amendments simply state that certain actions may or
may not be taken or that Americans are to enjoy this
or that freedom. The Second Amendment, for example,
says that ‘“‘the right of the people to keep and bear
arms shall not be infringed.”’ That means, many people
believe, that neither Congress nor the president nor
the courts can keep Americans from owning guns.
As a matter of fact, Madison originally wrote the
First Amendment in the style of the other nine. His first
draft read, “The civil rights of none shall be abridged
on account of religious belief, nor shall any national
religion be established, nor shall the full and equal
rights of conscience in any manner or on any pretext
30 God and Government _

be infringed.” But Congress debated the bill before

passing it, and during that debate Madison’s words
were altered. By the time a vote was taken, the word
Congress had slipped into the First Amendment.
Remember how Alexander Hamilton argued at the
Constitutional Convention against Charles Pinckney’s
proposed clause on religious laws? Now we can see
why. The First Amendment says what Congress cannot
do. What about presidents and the courts, though? The
amendment does not forbid either to act in religious
affairs. By specifying something Congress cannot do, it
implies what others may.
Our presidents call upon Americans to perform cer-
tain religious acts, such as observing days of prayer and
thanksgiving. President Ronald Reagan had been in of-
fice just a few hours when he asked Americans to go to
church to offer thanks for the release of fifty-two
Americans who had been held hostage in Iran for 444
days. Only two presidents, Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison, -believed that the First Amendment
made it impossible for them to proclaim religious hol-
idays.
What’s more, although the First Amendment says
Congress cannot establish one religion or prohibit the
practice of another, it does not prevent Congress from
passing amy kind of law that can affect religion. That
has left Congress free to provide tax exemptions for
religious groups, to give federal money to help support
 Tolerance to Freedom 31

parochial schools, to permit the mailing of religious

materials at special low postage rates, and so on.
A third ambiguous feature of the First Amendment
is that, as written, it applies only to the federal govern-
ment. It makes no mention of state and local govern-
ments and their relationship to religion. Even after the
Bill of Rights became part of the Constitution, states
were free to establish official religions, demand reli-
gious tests for office, and limit the civil rights of dis-
senters.
When the Constitution went into effect, four states,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and
Maryland, still maintained religious establishments. In
those states, every taxpayer was required to contribute
to religious organizations, although individuals could
choose which church or group they wanted their
money to go to.
Other vestiges of colonial attitudes toward religion
remained in the United States. New Hampshire Cath-
olics were not allowed to vote until 1851. Seventeen
years later, the New Hampshire constitution still
barred non-Protestants from state office, as North Car-
olina’s did non-Christians. (The North Carolina provi-
sion was largely ignored, however, and a Jew was
elected to the state legislature as early as 1808.) New
Jersey did not officially extend full civil rights to non-
Protestants until 1844. Only after 1868, when the na-
tion adopted the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal
32 God and Government

Constitution, did the First Amendment become legally

binding upon the states. —
The Fourteenth Amendment is one of three ratified
just after the Civil War and intended to protect the civil
rights of America’s former slaves. It provides that no
state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or prop-
erty.” Over the years, the Supreme Court has ruled that
the “liberty” of the Fourteenth Amendment includes
the religious liberty of the First. In effect, the Court
says that the First Amendment should be regarded as
saying: ““Congress and the state legislatures shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion, or pro-
hibiting the free exercise thereof.”
One final point about the First Amendment. Al-
though its aim may seem to be to limit religion’s role
in American life, its framers had no such intention in
mind. Nowhere does the amendment say that govern-
ment cannot show friendship and support for religion.
In fact, the idea that religious feeling is necessary in a
healthy society underlies the entire Constitution.
The Founding Fathers wanted to establish a system
of fair and just laws. To do that, they believed they
must model their civil law on the “natural law” of a
supreme being, or a universal creator. Most of them
believed in such a creator, although not all thought of
God as specifically Christian. When the Founding Fa-
thers banned religious tests for office and carefully sep-
arated church and state, they were trying not to
 Tolerance to Freedom — 33

exclude religion but to protect it. “Religion,” said

James Madison, “flourishes in greater purity, without
than with the aid of government.”
Madison was correct. Separating religion from gov-
ernment did allow it to flourish, and America has al-
ways been a deeply religious nation. As the pioneers
pushed westward, churches were among the first build-
ings they erected in each new town. Missionaries
braved the wilderness to bring the word of God to set-
tlers and Indians alike. In the cities of the East, clergy-
men welcomed thousands of immigrants, helped them
find homes and jobs, provided schools for their chil-
dren, hospitals for their sick, and charity for their
needy.
Visitors to the United States have been struck by this
nation’s great interest in religion. According to a
Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured Amer-
ica in 1830, “There is no country in the world in which
the Christian religion retains a greater influence over
the souls of men than in America.” Sixty years later,
the English diplomat James Bryce noted, “The influ-
ence of Christianity seems to be. . . greater and more
widespread in the United States than in any part of
western Continental Europe, and I think greater than
in England.”
Today, that religious feeling is still strong — and ap-
parently growing stronger — in America.
4, Church, State, and School

Molly is a tenth grader at St. Mary’s High School. St.

Mary’s is a private, parochial school, owned and run
by Molly’s church. It offers students a wide variety of
courses in English, social studies, science, math, foreign
languages — and church doctrine. Yet St. Mary’s is
supported in part by public money from local, state,
and federal governments.
Town money pays for Molly’s bus rides to and from
St. Mary’s. In the school library are dozens of books
purchased out of federal funds. Federal money also
provides remedial teachers and materials for boys and
girls who need the extra help. From the state comes
money to pay for testing St. Mary’s students in basic
skills to see how they compare to high-schoolers in
other systems. Molly’s state gives $10 million a year to
its private schools, most of which are church related.
In other words, government at all levels is subsidiz-
ing Molly’s parochial-school education. Her religious
training — and the religious training of millions of
other American children in church-run elementary and
 Church, State, and School 35

secondary schools — is partially paid for through taxes

collected from Americans of all faiths and creeds.
Is that constitutional? Does it violate the First
Amendment prohibition against the establishment of a
religion supported out of the public treasury?
Many Americans say it does. In 1961, shortly after
he became president, John F. Kennedy asked Congress
to pass a bill to provide more than $2 billion to the
nation’s schools over a three-year period. Kennedy em-
phasized that the money would go only to public ele-
mentary and high schools. He went on record as
believing it is unconstitutional to spend government
money on religious schools.
The president’s plan quickly ran into trouble in Con-
gress and within a year it was defeated. Much of the
Opposition came from church leaders who demanded
that parochial-school children get their “fair share” of
any federal funds for education.
Four years later, a new president, Lyndon B. John-
son, submitted another federal-aid-to-education bill.
Unlike the Kennedy proposal, the bill Johnson sent to
Congress provided for funds for private and parochial
schools as well as for public ones. That set off new
arguments in the Capitol and around the country. On
one side were “‘separationists,” who think church and
state ought to operate completely apart from each
other. On the other were “‘accommodationists,” who
believe it is the duty of government to accommodate —
36 God and Government

cooperate with or oblige — the nation’s religious insti-

tutions.
Separationists and accommodationists in Congress
debated for two months before reaching a compromise
and passing the first federal-aid-to-education law. For-
mally entitled the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act, the law gives aid to public schools and offers pri-
vate and parochial schools federal money to help them
provide certain services to their students. Under the
compromise, local school officials have some of the re-
sponsibility for deciding how public and private
schools will share federal-aid-to-education money. Lo-
cal officials also have to help determine how state and
municipal education funds will be used in their com-
munities. Therefore, the debate between separationists
and accommodationists continues locally as well as on
the state and federal levels.
Separationists see any government aid to parochial
schools as a violation of the First Amendment. What is
the difference between such aid, they ask, and the tax
the Southern colonists of the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries had to pay to maintain the Anglican
church? Or the money New Englanders were forced to
contribute to the support of their Puritan (later Con-
gregational) churches? Or the funds collected in New
York to support a variety of Protestant establishments?
No difference at all, is the separationists’ answer.
Nonsense — there’s a vast difference, the accommo-
 Church, State, and School 37>

dationists reply. The aid that church-run schools get

today is aid that benefits students, not the schools
themselves, and certainly not a church. Students are
getting the subsidized bus rides and are learning
through the remedial programs. Students are reading
the library books bought with taxpayer money. Stu-
dents take the tests that aim to make their education
comparable to that offered in public schools.
The separationists reject this argument. Students may
be the ones reading the books, they point out, but it
certainly benefits a school to have a large library, es-
pecially one that comes free. A school also saves by not
having to provide its own bus service or testing pro-
grams.
Accommodationists have an answer for that, too.
Even if getting public money does help a parochial
school, they say, that help has nothing to do with reli-
gion. Remedial programs teach math and reading, not
theology. Library books bought with government
money must be about nonreligious subjects; the gov-
ernment has made that plain to parochial-school ad-
ministrators. Government funds are used by parochial
schools to help cover the costs of secular programs, not
religious ones.
Separationists don’t accept that argument because it
is clear to them that any money a parochial school does
not have to spend on secular teaching is freed for its
religious program. Suppose a parochial school has
38 God and Government

$500 of church money available for new library books.

School officials plan to spend half the sum on nonreli-
gious fiction and nonfiction and half on theological
works. If the federal government comes along and of-
fers the school an additional $250, the school can buy
secular materials with that and double its expenditure
on religious publications. The government is helping
the school in its religious function, even if that help is
indirect.
What’s more, separationists say, government aid to
religious schools tends to help some religions more
than others. One that benefits especially is the Roman
Catholic church. About two thirds of all American re-
ligious elementary and secondary schools belong to the
Catholic church. Of the slightly over four million
American children in church-run schools, more than
three million attend Catholic schools. (That explains
why the word parochial seems to be a synonym for
Catholic. Actually the word means ‘“‘parish,” and a
parochial school is any school owned by a religious
group and intended to give students a religious, as well
as a secular, education.)
Another reason the Catholic church benefits so much
from parochial-school aid is that Catholic-school ad-
ministrators have traditionally been more likely than
Protestants or Jews to take advantage of whatever gov-
ernment money is available to them. In the past, few
non-Catholic groups applied for government aid for
 Church, State, and School 39

their schools and colleges. These groups have held a

separationist viewpoint, convinced that the First
Amendment does prohibit such government aid. In re-
turn, they expect no government interference in the
running of their institutions. During the 1961 debate
over President Kennedy’s aid-to-education bill, an offi-
cial of the Lutheran church, which runs a parochial-
school system of its own, came out flatly against any
form of public support for church-run schools.
Today, that Protestant attitude seems to be changing.
The past few years have seen a tremendous growth in
the number of Protestant “Christian schools.’ These
schools are owned and operated by Baptist churches,
or by other conservative or “fundamentalist” religious
groups, and their administrators are beginning to show
an interest in some forms of government subsidy. Fun-
damentalist churches, therefore, must be counted along
with the Catholic church as those that stand to benefit
most from state aid to private schools.
And that, the separationists argue, amounts to a kind
of establishment of religion. Using tax revenues to pay
parochial-school costs is the same as levying a tax to
help support Baptist and Catholic churches. It is un-
constitutional under the antiestablishment clause of the
First Amendment.
Not at all, accommodationists respond. On the con-
trary, it would be unconstitutional not to provide pub-
lic support for parochial schools. They maintain that if
40 God and Government

government does not give parochial schools the funds

they need to survive, it will jeopardize the religious
freedom of millions of Americans.
Why? A church’s parochial-school system is a vital
part of that church’s ministry. Take the Catholic school
system. One writer on church-state relations, Richard
E. Morgan, calls it “‘an important way in which the
Church goes about its business of fishing for souls.”
Deprive the Catholic church of its schools and you de-
prive it of a major tool for carrying out its religious
mission. Make it impossible for Catholic parents to ob-
tain a Catholic-school education for their children —
and this will happen if Catholic schools are forced to
close for lack of money — and you are keeping those
parents from observing their religion as they see fit. Fail
to provide the government support Catholic schools
need and you may be denying the free exercise of reli-
gion to forty-nine million American Catholics.
It’s the same for Christian schools. Many Baptists,
and members of other fundamentalist Protestant sects,
send their children to Christian schools so they will get
a good “moral” education. Boys and girls in Christian
schools are taught in ways that reflect fundamentalist
religious beliefs. In science class they learn about how
God created the earth and the heavens in six days, not
about Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of
plant and animal species. In English classes, they are
more likely to read stories about religion and morality
 Church, State, and School 41

than contemporary literature. Bible lessons and instruc-

tion in creationism are what many fundamentalists want
for their children, but such lessons are not available
in public schools. If Christian schools cannot survive
financially, fundamentalists will have lost the right to an
education in keeping with their religious convictions.
Separationists reject this argument as well. Carried
to its logical extreme, they say, it would oblige govern-
ment to pay the entire cost of the secular and religious
education of every fundamentalist in the country and
of every Catholic, too. In fact, it would mean providing
religious training for every child whose parents want it.
That could include just about every child in the nation.
Separationists point to another possible consequence
of continued public support for parochial schools —the
effect that such support is likely to have on the nation’s
public schools.
Public support for private schools hurts public
schools. Every dollar of local, state, or federal money
that goes to a parochial school is a dollar that is not
going to a public school. And public schools need every
dollar they can get. They face rising costs: Teachers’
salaries go up yearly, and so do the prices of heating
oil, gasoline for school buses, electricity, books, paper,
audio-visual equipment, telephone service, and so
forth. Already, hundreds of public-school systems are
in serious financial trouble.
That trouble will be worse in the future, if new
42 God and Government

schemes for the public support of private schools go

into effect. One plan calls for Congress to grant tax
credits to parents of private-school children. This will
permit people to deduct up to $500 per year from their
income-tax payments if they have children in a private
or parochial school. That’s a big saving, and a real in-
centive for American parents to abandon public edu-
cation.
Another idea for public financing of private schools
is the voucher plan. Under it, parents would get a
government voucher—a sort of blank check — to
“‘spend”’ at the public or private school of their choice.
Each school would send the vouchers received from
parents to the state or federal government, which
would then reimburse the school for each child’s edu-
cation. This plan, like tax credits, would surely be
challenged in the Supreme Court. If the Court ruled it
was constitutional, it would be bound to encourage pa-
rents to send their children to private and parochial
schools. It would help those schools only at the expense
of public ones.
Who would be most likely to suffer most from the
weakening of America’s public-school system? Most
educators and social scientists agree it would be girls
and boys from needy families or those who are black or
belong to other minority groups. These children are
most dependent upon the public schools for their edu-
cation. Many Americans fear that government aid to
 Church, State, and School 43

parochial schools, especially to the fast-growing

Christian-school system, will result in better education
for white middle-class students and poorer education
for minority students and for the urban poor of all
races and nationalities. They predict it will produce
private schools full of white faces and public schools
full of darker ones.
Most civil rights leaders oppose the voucher plan
and the tax credit plan. Dr. Eugene T. Reed of the Na-
tional Association for the Advancement of Colored
People stated that organization’s position: “We are
against aid [to private schools] in any way, shape, or
form, because it only helps those who would skirt leg-
islation on segregation.”
Some church leaders agree. The Reverend Dean Kel-
ley, of the National Council of Churches, which rep-
resents thirty-two Protestant and Eastern Orthodox
denominations, is one of them. “Subsidizing private
schools . . . [with] religious schools giving preference
to their own members might succeed in carrying out
. . racial segregation with federal funds,” he said.
Kelley and Reed are firm believers in freedom of re-
ligion. As far as they are concerned, Catholics, Baptists,
Jews, and all others are free to give their children
whatever kind of religious training they want. But they,
like other separationists, do not accept the argument
that eliminating public support for religious schools
threatens anyone’s liberties. Furthermore, they are
44 God and Government

unwilling to endanger America’s public-school system

by turning more and more public money over to pri-
vate and parochial education.
Accommodationists believe in freedom of religion,
too. But they believe freedom cannot be assured unless
government does all it can to encourage and support
religion.
Although accommodationists and separationists both
believe in the First Amendment, the two groups see
that amendment from different points of view. Separa-
tionists emphasize the amendment’s opening words:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establish-
ment of religion.”” Accommodationists stress the next
clause: ‘“‘or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The two clauses express a common goal — to pro-
tect Americans’ religious liberties. At times, however,
they come into conflict. The first part of the amend-
ment prohibits any public support for religion. It says
government must be absolutely neutral in church mat-
ters. The second.part implies something other than
strict neutrality. In forbidding the government to
hinder the free exercise of religion, it hints that under
some circumstances government may show positive
support for religious institutions.
This conflict underlies arguments between separa-
tionists and accommodationists over state aid to paro-
chial schools. It underlies other disagreements about
church-state relations as well.
5. ‘Taxes and Charities

“In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes,”

said Benjamin Franklin. But as far as America’s reli-
gious institutions are concerned, Franklin was wrong.
Taxes are not at all certain for them.
The nation’s tax laws — local, state, and federal —
are designedto favor institutions that serve the com-
munity. School buildings and college campuses, for ex-
ample, are exempt from local property taxes.
Donations to charitable organizations such as the Red
Cross or the United Fund are not subject to income
tax. Scientific and medical research foundations, non-
profit environmental groups, and consumer organiza-
tions also enjoy advantages under tax laws. But of all
the institutions that profit from tax exemptions, reli-
gious groups benefit most.
Tax exemptions for churches fall into three categories.
First are tax-free donations to religious organizations.
Anyone who gives money to a church can subtract
that sum from his or her total income before figuring
out how much tax is owed. The larger the donation,
46 God and Government

the greater the tax saving, and that encourages people

to give generously to the ‘religion of their choice.
Another advantage for churches is that much of their
real estate —land and buildings —is not taxed. Ac-
cording to one estimate, there is more than $80 billion
worth of untaxed church property in the United States.
New York City alone could raise an extra $35 million
a year by taxing its church-owned real estate.
Religious institutions also benefit from laws that al-
most entirely exempt them from income taxes on the
money they make in various business activities. This
particular advantage is unique to religious groups. Un-
like the law on donations or on property taxes, it does
not apply to other nonprofit organizations, or to edu-
cational or research facilities.
How does the conflict between the antiestablishment
clause and the free-exercise provision of the First
Amendment apply to tax matters? Some people claim
that the exemptions are unfair and unconstitutional be-
cause in granting them, government is making an es-
tablishment of religion. Saying that a church does not
have to pay a property or income tax is the same as
giving that church a gift of public money, they main-
tain. By permitting church property to go untaxed in
New York City, officials there are giving city churches
$35 million annually.
Of course the city can’t afford to give up that $35
million altogether. The money has to come from some-
 Taxes and Charities 47

where, and “somewhere” turns out to be the pockets

of New Yorkers. The taxpaying public makes up the
$35 million by paying higher taxes than it would have
to if the religious exemptions did not exist. New York-
ers, like everyone else in the country, are taxed extra
to support religion. That does appear to be a direct
violation of the first part of the First Amendment.
But the second part of the amendment makes it clear
why Americans accept the “‘violation.” To allow taxa-
tion of church income and real estate would be to place
America’s religions at the mercy of the state. Taxing
religious organizations could make possible the very re-
ligious persecution the Founding Fathers tried to avoid.
Imagine that your neighborhood suddenly becomes
the headquarters of a new church. Members of this
church hold unconventional religious views. Perhaps
they profess to believe in the occult, or in a mixture of
Christianity and Eastern mysticism. They dress oddly,
and roam the streets asking for handouts or selling
novelty items. They hang around school yards and rec-
reation centers seeking to convert the young people
they meet.
It doesn’t take long for townspeople to become up-
set. Parents don’t want their children to join the new
church and turn away from family and faith. Citizens
are sick of being asked for money every time they
appear downtown. Store owners don’t like shoppers
being bothered by church members. They fear cus-
48 God and Government

tomers will start taking their business where they can

shop without being annoyed. Soon the whole town is
demanding that the church be forced to close down.
How best to get it out of town? Tax it out. Slap
higher and higher property taxes on any land or build-
ings the church owns. Deny church members tax-
exempt status for their businesses. Tax their incomes
to the hilt. Pretty soon the church will be gone.
The power to tax involves the power to destroy, Su-
preme Court Chief Justice John Marshall said a cen-
tury and a half ago. He was right. If it had this taxing
power, government could destroy our imaginary
church and deprive its members of their freedom of re-
ligion. Unquestionably, tax exemptions for religious in-
stitutions must continue if we are to have freedom of
religion.
Yet the exemptions raise problems. They are tanta-
mount to outright gifts. And as with public aid to par-
ochial schools, American tax laws benefit some
churches more than others. Religious institutions that
are rich and own lots of property — the Catholic, Ep-
iscopal, and Mormon churches, for example — can
save millions of dollars a year. Other denominations,
such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Pentecostal groups,
which own little money or property, have less to gain
from tax-exemption laws.
Another problem is that people may take unfair
advantage of laws that protect church property and
 Taxes and Charities 49

income from taxation. In some cases, people disgusted

with high property taxes have sent away to ‘“‘divin-
ity schools” for quick, easy-to-pass correspondence
courses. Hundreds of people from all walks of life now
have diplomas showing they are “ministers’’ — and ex-
empt from property taxes. In 1981, however, a New
York court ruled mail-order religious exemptions ille-
gal in that state.
Other people try to use religious exemptions to get
around income-tax laws. In the mid-1970s, five Con-
necticut priests set up a tax-exempt mail-order busi-
ness. In theory, income from the business went to
charity, but in fact, the priests lived, overlooking scenic
Long Island Sound, in a luxurious mansion complete
with a private swimming pool and a garage full of ex-
pensive cars. Not surprisingly, the federal government
questioned the business’s tax-exempt status, and in
1980, the Postal Service took away its mailing permit,
which had allowed the priests to ship their products at
special low rates.
Federal authorities also questioned the tax exemp-
tions of the Christian Brothers winery in California.
The Christian Brothers are members of a monastery,
but the wine and brandy they produce are on sale in
supermarkets and liquor stores from coast to coast. For
years, the brothers paid no income tax, and in the late
1950S, government tax collectors sued them in court
for $3.5 million in back taxes. According to the
50 God and Government

government, the brothers were engaged in a profit-

making business.
The brothers countered by asserting that their wine
making was a sacerdotal activity (wine is used in the
Catholic sacrament of communion) and hence pro-
tected under the First Amendment’s free-exercise
clause. The court, however, did not agree, and ordered
the brothers to pay the taxes.
Even some religious leaders find fault with certain
church tax exemptions. Eugene Carson Blake, past
president of the National Council of Churches, de-
plores the fact that exemptions put so much of the tax
burden on those who can least afford it, the poor. He
fears that one day Americans may turn against their
rich and powerful churches. ‘‘One hundred years from
now,” said Dr. Blake, “the present pattern of religious
tax exemption . . . may present the state with prob-
lems of such magnitude that their only solution will be
revolutionary expropriation of church property.”
James A. Pike, the former Episcopal bishop of San
Francisco, agreed. Pike believed that some churches
have bécome too wealthy, too involved with money
matters. ‘“Worldly power has seduced the church from
its spiritual concerns of the past,’ he contended. The
American Jewish Congress (AJC), also concerned
about religious exemptions that seem unfair, has begun
making a yearly financial contribution to New York
City in place of taxes on its Manhattan headquarters.
 Taxes and Charities 51

The AJC does not oppose all tax exemptions for re-
ligious institutions, any more than Dr. Blake or Bishop
Pike. Certainly, all would favor exemptions on build-
ings actually used for worship, or on funds that go for
religious work. But to them, exemptions on commer-
cial real estate, or on a church’s business income, are
different. In their view, the free-exercise clause of the
First Amendment does not require government to help
religion out by exempting churches from almost all
taxes.
Another church-state controversy that revolves
around the conflicting themes of the First Amendment
concerns social service programs. Traditionally,
churches have run hospitals, orphanages, counseling
centers, soup kitchens, and many other charities. The
Catholic church has a particularly well organized and
staffed welfare system.
But in the United States today, church welfare is not
enough. Americans have become accustomed to a tre-
mendous variety of social services, aid to dependent
children, food stamps, free or relatively inexpensive
medical care, foster care, social security for widows
and orphans and the elderly, Head Start and day-care
programs, subsidized school breakfasts and lunches —
the list goes on and on. Only government, with its
enormous taxing power, can afford it all. Yet few
churches want to abandon their centuries-old charities.
The solution? Channel government social service
52 God and Government

funds through church welfare facilities. Offer govern-

ment funds for expansion programs at church hospi-
tals. Pay church orphanages to care for parentless
children. Make it financially possible for religious insti-
tutions to continue their function of feeding the hun-
gry, nursing the ill, and sheltering the homeless.
This solution has its advantages. It permits the gov-
ernment to help support religious institutions, and at
the same time, it lets churches help government and the
needy. Church welfare organizations are already in
place, so government does not have to waste time and
money constructing new public facilities. Often a
church can provide more care for less money, too. This
is especially true of Catholic institutions, which may be
staffed by members of religious orders rather than by
outside professionals who demand high salaries.
Yet there are drawbacks to this solution, drawbacks
like the First Amendment prohibition against establish-
ment of a religion. What is giving state money to a
church-run orphanage or hospital but government sup-
port for the church? And again, although government
may not intend to favor one religion over another,
some churches do benefit more than others from gov-
ermment aid.
In 1946 a law called the Hill-Burton Act made $150
million in federal funds available for hospital construc-
tion. During the first four years the law was in effect,
the government made ninety-nine grants to hospitals
 Taxes and Charities 53

with religious affiliations. Of the ninety-nine hospitals,

seventy-six were Catholic. In all, Catholic institutions
received more than 80 percent of the funds given out
to church-affiliated hospitals in those four years. The
remaining 20 percent went largely to Episcopalian,
Methodist, and Jewish hospitals.
But does it matter that Catholic hospitals benefited
most under Hill-Burton? After all, Catholic hospitals
were presumably giving the most service, too, since
they so greatly outnumbered hospitals of other denom-
inations. Unfortunately the kind of service they were
giving did turn out to be a problem.
Soon after receiving one large Hill-Burton grant, St.
Francis’s Catholic hospital in Poughkeepsie, New
York, ordered seven of its doctors to stop practicing
there. The doctors were associated with Planned Par-
enthood, an organization that promotes family plan-
ning and birth control. The Catholic church regards
birth control as morally unacceptable.
Suppose a non-Catholic woman were admitted to St.
Francis. While in the hospital, in a wing built with fed-
eral money, the woman asks for information about
methods of birth control.
St. Francis doctors refuse her request. They tell the
woman that contraception is a sin and that it is up to
God, not her, to decide how many children she will
have.
Yet the woman’s own religious convictions do allow
54 God and Government

her to use birth control. In fact, she believes it would

be wrong — morally wrong — for her to have more
children than she and her husband want and can care
for. Now she is being forced to accept religious dictates
she does not believe in. And she is being forced to do
so at government expense.
Could this really happen? In 1980, the Roman
Catholic Archdiocese of New York, under a contract
with New York City, took over responsibility for pro-
viding medical services at two city hospitals. As the
contract took effect, church leaders announced that
abortions — legal under law but condemned by the
Catholic church — would no longer be performed at
either hospital, nor would patients be given advice
about contraception.
City officials reacted quickly. They reminded the
archdiocese that it was receiving $2.25 million yearly
in state welfare money. Under the state constitution,
none of that money can go to a religious institution
unless the institution acts in a purely nonreligious ca-
pacity. To force Catholic beliefs upon non-Catholics in
a public hospital is not acting in a “nonreligious capac-
ity.” If New York permitted Catholic officials to follow
their announced policy, they would be promoting the
doctrine of one church and forcing the three-hundred-
thousand-odd young women served by the two hospi-
tals to adopt that doctrine as their own. That would
 Taxes and Charities 55

violate the U.S. Constitution as well as the constitution

of New York State.
Then should the city have ordered the archdiocese to
compel its doctors to perform abortions? That would
mean forcing Catholics to accept moral standards they
do not believe in. It would mean forcing them to com-
mit what they see as a mortal sin. That, too, would
violate the First Amendment.
Eventually a compromise was reached. The arch-
diocese agreed to offer abortions and birth-control in-
formation at Lincoln and Metropolitan hospitals. But
the services are available through independent staff
members; no doctor or nurse connected with the arch-
diocese, or with its medical college, is involved.
Separationists seem satisfied with this compromise.
But many would probably be happier if no compromise
had been necessary, if government programs were not
funded through religious institutions at all. That would
not violate anyone’s religious liberties, they believe, be-
cause people would still be free to appeal to charities
run by their own churches. Keeping public money out
of religious institutions, the strict separationists say, is
the only way to be sure of avoiding an unconstitutional
establishment of religion.
6. Rights in Conflict

Bang! Bang! Charles Williams was cleaning paint

brushes in his uncle’s Detroit neighborhood when he
heard the shots. Perhaps Williams tried to take shelter;
perhaps he did not have time. What is certain is that a
bullet entered his shoulder and that he fell to the
ground. He was rushed to a nearby hospital.
In the emergency room, the thirty-three-year-old
Williams was met by a doctor who saw at once that
although the wound was serious — a blood vessel near
the heart had been cut as the bullet passed through —
it would probably not be fatal. An operation would be
necessary to repair the artery and Williams would need
repeated transfusions to replace the blood he was los-
ing. Even so, the doctor was “more than 90 percent
certain” the patient would recover.
Six and a half hours later, Williams was dead — dead
because he refused to permit doctors to give him the
blood he needed. He belonged to a religious group, Je-
hovah’s Witnesses, that prohibits transfusions. The
Witnesses cite the Bible’s book of Acts, chapter 15,
 Rights in Conflict 57

verse 20 —“*. . . abstain from pollutions of idols, and

from fornication, and from things strangled, and from
blood” — as the basis of their prohibition. Faithful to
his convictions, the young man chose death. Making
that choice, he created a tangle of legal and ethical
problems.
A few days after the shooting, which took place in
July 1980, two men were charged in the case. The two
lived just down the street from the garage where Wil-
liams had been working. They had begun arguing, then
quarreled fiercely. Each went into his house and re-
turned armed with a gun. Blazing away at each other
from opposite sides of the street, one fired wildly, hit-
ting Williams. The two men were charged with murder.
Murder? A lawyer for one of the men argued that no
murder had been committed. Instead, the Jehovah’s
Witness had chosen to die. “It’s my position,” the law-
yer said, “‘that a person cannot arbitrarily refuse med-
ical attention and die as a result and then have
someone charged with his murder.” In the view of
many, Williams died because he refused medical care,
not because he was shot. To convict those who fired
the bullets would be to punish them for Williams’s re-
ligious beliefs. And what if the shooting had taken
place in a state with the death penalty for murder? If
anyone were executed for a crime like this one, who
would have caused whose death?
Of course, the accused men’s rights could have been
58 God and Government

protected by forcing the shooting victim to accept

blood. The hospital might have requested an emer-
gency court session and applied for permission to go
ahead with transfusions. But if the court had granted
permission, wouldn’t it have been violating the pa-
tient’s First Amendment right to practice his religion as
he saw fit, without interference from the state? Surely,
if separation of church and state means anything, it
means government will not interfere in people’s private
religious beliefs.
Unfortunately it’s not that simple. Many times one
person’s right to religious liberty comes into conflict
with someone else’s civil, religious, or moral rights.
The Jehovah’s Witness case is particularly dramatic,
but the question it raises — to what extent may gov-
ernment curtail one liberty in order to preserve an-
other? — is a question that comes up over and over in
church-state relations. Often, as in this case, it arises
over medical issues.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are not alone in their attitude
toward certain techniques of modern medicine. Other
groups, notably members of the Church of Christ, Sci-
entist, reject the concept of illness as something that
requires medical treatment. Christian Scientists believe
that what others call illness is nothing but an illusion
that can be overcome through prayer and positive
thinking. Healing comes from God, not man, and
 Rights in Conflict 59

practicing Christian Scientists will have nothing to do

with doctors, hospitals, or medicinal drugs. Members
of some other religions, too, stay away from medicines
and rely on faith to heal them when they are ill or
injured.
For adults, such reliance can be defended. A mature
man or woman who is sick by medical standards can
claim the right to refuse treatment. If the patient is a
child, though, it is a different matter.
Take the case of a three-year-old with cancer. Doc-
tors say that without treatment the child will die. The
parents are aware of the diagnosis, but their religious
principles do not allow them to receive medical care
and they deeply believe it would be wrong for their
child to receive it either. Should the doctors take the
parents to court, gain temporary custody of the child,
and treat him? Should the parents be allowed to act on
their convictions and condemn their child to death?
Whose right is greater: a child’s to life or an adult’s to
freedom of conscience?
Now suppose that a terminally ill cancer patient is
severely mentally retarded, unable to walk or talk,
doomed to live out his life in a vegetablelike state. Or
suppose he is less retarded, but still unable to live a
normal life. Should his parents be able to keep doctors
from giving him life-saving medical care? In a recent
Massachusetts case, the guardian of a retarded leuke-
60 God and Government

mia victim asked doctors to withhold treatment. But

state authorities threatened a murder prosecution if the
guardian stopped treatment and the patient died.
Another case involving death arose in New York
State in 1979. In this instance the patient was a mem-
ber of the Marianist Brotherhood, a Catholic religious
order. Blind and comatose, eighty-three-year-old
Brother Joseph Charles Fox lay in a Long Island hos-
pital, kept alive by a mechanical respirator that did his
breathing for him. Outside Brother Fox’s hospital
room, members of his religious community sought
court permission to turn the respirator off so the old
man could “‘die with dignity.’’ Quoting Catholic
church doctrine, the Marianists called the respirator
“fan extraordinary measure which need not be used to
prolong life.” Yet a New York district attorney made
it clear that under the law he could ask for a murder
indictment against anyone who did turn off the ma-
chine. The D.A. feared that if the law allowed a respir-
ator to be turned off, it might one day allow “‘mercy
killings” of patients with terminal illness or those who
were in great pain. (Many doctors, of course, share this
fear.) The district attorney acted on the assumption
that Brother Fox’s right to cling to life outweighed his
right to death with dignity. Was he right?
Rights come into conflict over other life-or-death is-
sues. Since 1973, when the Supreme Court overturned
state antiabortion laws, abortion has been legal in this
 Rights in Conflict 61

country. Not only that, but for a time, low-income

women could receive abortions at public expense,
through state and federal health-care programs. By the
late 1970s, however, new state and federal laws limited
the use of government money for abortion, and in
1980 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of these restric-
tive laws.
Should government condone — even pay for — abor-
tions. The operation means taking the life of a fetus
that would otherwise develop into a baby, a human
being. Millions of Americans regard abortion as mur-
der and believe it should be banned, by a constitutional
amendment if necessary.
Other people see it differently. They think that only
a woman herself has the right to decide whether to
bear a child. This is particularly true when a pregnancy
is the result of rape or incest, but in amy case, they
maintain, government should not tell a woman what to
do about a matter as personal as her health.
Who is right: those who believe in a woman’s “right
to choose,” or those who emphasize a fetus’s “right to
life’’?
Closely related to the abortion issue is the matter of
birth control. For many Americans, religious objections
to abortion also apply to contraception. The Catholic
church, for instance, links birth control, abortion, and
the right to die. Birth and death are irreversible pro-
cesses, the church says, and humans have no right to
62 God and Government

interfere with either. Laws in several of the world’s

Catholic nations limit people’s right to obtain contra-
ceptives. Should similar laws be passed here?
Conflicts over people’s religious rights is not limited
to life-or-death issues. They can crop up anywhere, in
schools, in industry — even in athletics.
One sports organization whose members helped stir
a conflict is the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, high-school
football team. Many Oak Ridge students and teachers,
including members of the team, are devout Christians.
Before every game, the team gathers on the field for a
prayer. Players pray during and after the game, too,
and before and after practice sessions.
Finally, an Oak Ridge lawyer, the father of a former
team member, objected. He alleged that it is against the
Constitution to require public-schoo! students, some of
whom may not be devout Christians, or Christians at
all, to take part in prayer. The lawyer asked the school
board to order an end to religious observances on
school property or during school functions.
Should the board do as the lawyer asked? Or may
team members continue to pray together publicly?
Which right should government protect: one person’s
right to worship or another’s not to be forced to do
SO?
Prayer is a volatile issue around the country. Until
the mid-1960s, students in public schools listened to a
Bible reading and repeated the Lord’s Prayer every day.
 Rights in Conflict 63

Then the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to

force students in public, tax-supported schools to par-
ticipate in the rituals of a particular faith. Bible reading
and group praying are now illegal in public schools.
Many Americans deplore the court’s decision and are
mounting a strong movement to “get religion back into
the schools.” A 1980 Massachusetts law required pub-
lic-school teachers to ask for student volunteers to lead
each class in prayer. Anyone who did not care to take
part could get up, leave the room, and stand outside in
the corridor. A Kentucky law made it mandatory to
post a copy of the Ten Commandments in every class-
room in every public school in the ‘state. And there
have been several attempts to amend the Constitution
to obligate schools to set aside time for “voluntary”
prayer by teachers and students.
Should such an arnendment be added to the federal
Constitution? Should the Massachusetts and Kentucky
laws be permitted to stand? Should government pro-
mote religious practices or try to keep them out of the
nation’s public institutions?
Rights come into conflict in other school-related
matters. Not long ago, a New York dairy farmer
named Thomas Hemple took his twelve-year-old
daughter and eleven-year-old twin sons out of public
school. Public schools “turn out mental and moral
cripples,” Hemple said, and he began teaching his chil-
dren at home. School authorities, however, said the
64 God and Government

children were not learning well under their father’s in-

struction, and ordered them back to class. A family
court judge repeated the order, but Hemple would not
promise to obey it. “I’m going to do what it tells me to
do in the Bible,” he told news reporters.
Should the court back up its order with a fine or a
jail term for Hemple? Should it remove his children
from his care, as courts have sometimes done in such
cases? Whose right is greater: a child’s to what the
community considers a good education or a father’s to
exercise his religious beliefs?
Educational standards are at issue in other cases, es-
pecially since the sudden growth of the Christian-
school system. Around the country, Christian-school
officials are pressing for exemptions from state educa-
tion standards. If exemptions are allowed, Christian
schools (and other private and parochial schools) could
hire teachers who do not meet any of the requirements
for public-school teachers. School administrators could
crowd as many pupils into each classroom as they
wished and refuse to follow state curriculum guidelines
for academic subjects. Schools might not even have to
meet state health and safety standards.
Christian-school administrators argue that unless
they win exemptions, their religious liberty is compro-
mised. Staff members’ religious beliefs are more impor-
tant than their teaching credentials, the administrators
say, because they are more like missionaries than
 Rights in Conflict 65

teachers. They must continue to put missionary work

first, the administrators say, if Christian schools are to
teach fundamentalist religious beliefs to their students.
Christian-school authorities also demand absolute free-
dom to decide what their student will read and study.
If their boys and girls spend most of their time studying
the Bible, and little or no time doing math or reading
world history and literature, that is none of the state’s
business. For the state to set educational standards for
Christian schools is to violate fundamentalists’ reli-
gious rights.
Public-school officials, among others, dispute this.
They believe government has an obligation to see that
all the nation’s children get a good, well-rounded edu-
cation. The only way to make sure they do is to force
parochial schools to conform to basic state education
standards.
Which set of school officials is right? How much
should the state interfere in Christian education?
How much should Christians interfere in state edu-
cation? In many school districts, fundamentalists are
demanding that students be taught creationism — the
theory that God created the heavens and the earth in
six days — along with Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Teaching evolution without creationism, they say, vio-
lates their children’s religious rights.
Representatives of major faiths and most public-
school officials object to including creationism in the
66 God and Government

science curriculum. Creationism is a religious belief,

they maintain, and has nothing to do with science.
Teaching it as part of a science course will confuse stu-
dents about what science really is. In addition, public-
school employees should not be required to teach the
religious doctrines of any church.
Whose right should take precedence — a fundamen-
talist’s to hear his point of view in class, or another’s
to study science unmixed with religious theory?
Another school issue is involved in the case of the
Rebekah Home for Girls in Corpus Christi, Texas. The
home was founded in 1957 by Lester Roloff, an evan-
gelist minister with Old Testament ideas about sin and
punishment. Roloff describes the girls in his home as
“prostitutes, runaways, and dopers.’’ Many were sent
to him by their families, but their expenses were largely
paid for through Roloff’s ‘People’s Church.” Under
Roloff’s direction, the girls spent four hours a day
studying religion and less time on academic subjects.
They wore uniforms and gave up radio, television, rock
music, coffee, soft drinks, and almost all make-up.
Roloff kept a close check on his girls. Their rooms
were bugged and alarms were wired to each window.
Mail was censored. Girls who broke the rules were
“licked” with wooden paddles; those who tried to run
away were put in solitary confinement for days at a
time. People familiar with the home spoke of even
worse physical and mental abuses.
 Rights in Conflict 67

Did social workers for the state of Texas have the

right to go into the Rebekah Home and see what con-
ditions were like? Roloff said no. The home was a
branch of his church and churches are outside govern-
ment control, he said.
State officials disagreed. They claimed that the girls
at the Rebekah Home were treated more harshly than
prisoners at most juvenile jails. Yet they were not con-
victed criminals, just teen-agers from troubled homes.
“The state had a right to protect these kids,” one for-
mer member of the state attorney general’s staff said.
Another school issue involves segregation. During
the 1960s and 1970s, the federal government made
massive efforts to integrate America’s public schools.
Busing — transporting students from black neighbor-
hoods to white schools and from white neighborhoods
to largely black schools — is one of the most effective,
and least popular, ways the government has found to
intégrate. =
Resentment over “forced” busing is strong among
many Americans. Both blacks and whites have worried
about its inconvenience, about long pre-dawn and
after-dark bus rides for children as young as five and
six. Other people don’t like the fact that children may
be taken out of modern suburban schools and driven
to dilapidated city schools. And some white parents
plain don’t like the idea of integration and think whites
ought to stick with whites and blacks with blacks.
 -

68 God and Government

Whatever its cause, the resentment has led to the

founding of thousands of so-called segregation acade-
mies — private schools with firm, but unwritten,
‘whites only” admission policies. The Southern states
alone have thirty-five hundred such schools, many of
them church run. These schools, of course, have en-
joyed the tax-exempt status of other American religious
and educational institutions.
Does the fact that a segregation academy is run by a
church mean it does not have to abide by federal inte-
gration guidelines? Members of some Christian
churches say that is just what it means. They claim the
Bible forbids people of different races to mingle and
live together, and that claim makes a belief in segrega-
tion part of their religious convictions. If government
forces them to integrate — by ordering their schools to
admit blacks or give up their tax exemptions, for in-
stance — it is interfering in the free exercise of their
religion. Whose right is greater — a school official’s to
practice segregation based on religious belief, or the
government’s to insist that boys and girls of all races
get equal treatment?
Religion and government come into conflict in busi-
ness and industry, too. Suppose a job applicant belongs
to a faith that celebrates Saturday as a holy day. Can
an employer refuse to hire someone who will not
promise to work Saturdays? Should applicants have to
give up their religious convictions to get a job? Or
 Rights in Conflict 69

should the employer have to put up with the extra ex-

pense and inconvenience of accommodating an em-
ployee’s religion? If employer and employee disagree,
and one takes the other to court, which side will the
court favor? How can government strike a balance be-
tween protecting the religious rights of workers and the
economic interests of employers?
In some cases, a person may refuse, for religious rea-
sons, to perform actions that most others take for
granted. For example, Quakers and members of other
pacifist groups will not fight for their country, citing
their “conscientious objection” to warfare. Jehovah’s
Witnesses will neither go to war nor take part in any
other aspect of public life (aside from paying their
taxes). The refusal of Jehovah’s Witnesses to allow
their children to salute the flag in school led, in the
1930s and 1940s, to several court cases. The Witnesses
claimed the First Amendment protected their refusal,
and the government maintained that reciting the Pledge
of Allegiance is a patriotic duty that schools have a
right to demand.
Sometimes government has even been called upon to
regulate the manner in which men and women may
worship in their own churches or on their own prop-
erty. That happened in the summer of 1979 in rural
Pennsylvania, during a camp meeting of the Voice
of the Nazarene Association of Independent Churches.
Association members praise God with loud song and
70 God and Government

prayer, and at this particular meeting, they set up loud-

speakers to amplify their worship. Non-Nazarene
neighbors complained about the noise and asked local
law officers to put an end to it. The neighbors had a
legitimate grievance; the noise level was tremendous
and had been for days. But the Nazareries contended
that enthusiastic singing and praying was required in
their religion. “If we have to tone down our services,
we might as well quit,’ one minister complained. Did
the state have the right to make him quit just to pre-
serve the peace?
Yes. That was the answer of local government in
Pennsylvania.
A justice of the peace ruled that the Nazarenes were
disturbing the peace and levied a fine against them. In
his view, the issue centered on the loudspeakers. The
group had every right to obey what it saw as the
Biblical command to offer loud praise to God, the jus-
tice of the peace said. But the Bible says nothing about
using an amplifying system, and it was that which
turned lawful hymn singing into a public nuisance.
Singing and praying are a legitimate part of the Naza-
rene’s religious practices and thus protected under the
First Amendment. Loudspeakers are not.
In effect, the justice of the peace was saying that al-
though Americans may worship freely according to
their beliefs, they do not have the right to impose those
beliefs on other people. The First Amendment says
 Rights in Conflict 71

every American is entitled to religious liberty, but it

does not say that any one church or group is to enjoy
special privileges denied to other groups, or to nonbe-
lievers. With this in mind, let’s go back and take a
closer look at the questions we have raised in this
chapter.
7. Special Privilege and the
First Amendment

Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot be made to salute the flag.

In 1943, the Supreme Court reversed an earlier deci-
sion and ruled that school authorities have no right to
compel students to make a public display of patriotism.
“No official, high or petty,”’ the Court said, “can pre-
scribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism,
religion, or other matters of opinion.” Similarly, the
Court said, an individual may claim conscientious ob-
jector status and avoid military service as long as that
individual acts out of sincere religious or moral convic-
tion. Government cannot force anyone to act against
his or her conscience.
In the world of business, the First Amendment is in-
terpreted to mean that employers must make “‘reason-
able accommodation” to workers’ religious needs. The
owner of a business may not routinely reject job appli-
cations from people who cannot work Saturdays, or
whose beliefs keep them from doing a particular task.
In a 1981 decision, the Supreme Court strengthened
this position by upholding the right of a Jehovah’s Wit-
 x

Special Privilege and the First Amendment 73

ness to refuse to help in the manufacture of military

equipment.
In fact, the Equal Employment Opportunity Com-
mission of the federal government forbids employers
even to ask applicants how their religion might affect
their ability to do a job. The commission feels that per-
mitting such a question could lead to widespread dis-
crimination against some groups. But at the same time,
workers may not “‘hinder” their employers by making
impossible demands based on religious beliefs. For in-
stance, nurses, air traffic controllers, and policemen
cannot neglect their jobs in favor of performing reli-
gious rituals. Not only would such neglect inconve-
nience their employers, it could endanger the public.
In 1980 the commission issued written guidelines so
employers and workers would understand their rights
in regard to religious rules and time-off requirements.
These guidelines are not absolute, however, and both
workers and employers are likely to protest many of
them. Some cases may end up in court and that will
probably mean revised regulations in the future.
The amount of regulation government can impose on
church-run schools and other institutions may change
in the months and years ahead, too. In the past, the
federal government has accepted the argument of
hundreds of private schools that racial segregation can
be defended under the First Amendment’s free-exercise
clause. Soon things may be different. A United States
74 God and Government

court has ordered an end to tax exemptions for Missis-

sippi schools that cannot prove they are making an
honest effort to attract and select black students and
teachers. From now on, “‘segregation academies” in
that state will find it more expensive to use “‘religious
freedom’? as a justification for breaking state and fed-
eral integration rulings. This court decision emphasized
equal civil rights for blacks and whites over the right
of a church to impose segregation on its community.
But the decision applied only to Mississippi and it is
uncertain whether it will be extended to other states.
In Texas, Lester Roloff closed down the Rebekah
Home — temporarily. While it was closed, he reorga-
nized it, making it a part of his church. Reopened in
1981, the school won the backing of a state judge, who
ruled that under the separation clause of the First
Amendment, a government cannot intervene in a
church-owned and -operated institution.
The Texas ruling suggests that courts may eventually
rule in favor of parochial schools that are suing for
freedom from state education standards. By the early
1980s, such suits were pending in at least thirty states.
Courts may even decide that parents like Thomas
Hemple may keep their children out of school alto-
gether. Of course, public-school officials and others
will continue to argue that academic standards have
nothing to do with freedom of religion.
 S
Special Privilege and the First Amendment 75

Another 1981 court decision, this one in California,

also endorsed the separation principle. California fun-
damentalists had brought suit to force public-school
science teachers to instruct students in creationism as
well as in the theory of evolution. The judge in this
case ruled that teaching evolution, and evolution alone,
does not violate the religious rights of those who be-
lieve in the Itceral truth of the Bible. He emphasized
that California law already requires teachers to present
the theory of evolution as just that — a theory — and
to tell students that scientists do not agree on exactly
how evolution takes place.
Court decisions on religious observances in public
schools have also reinforced the separation of church
and state. The 1980 Massachusetts prayer law was
only six weeks old when the state’s Supreme Judicial
Court ruled it unconstitutional. The court said the law
violated the antiestablishment clause of the Constitu-
tion. It gave special status to Christianity. The law dis-
criminated against the public-school children of non-
Christians by forcing them to either participate in a
Christian ritual or be banished from the room. For the
same reason, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the
Kentucky law requiring the Ten Commandments to be
displayed in classrooms. Posting Bible selections, like
engaging in Christian prayer, means favoring one re-
ligion over all others. Nevertheless, months after the
 ~

56 God and Government

court ruling in this case, many Kentucky school boards

were still ordering that the Ten Commandments be
displayed in public schools.
Court decisions that reinforce the separation of
church and state have been welcomed not just by non-
Christians but by Christians as well. To millions of de-
vout Catholics and Protestants, the separation principle
is more important than public displays of Christian de-
votion. They know that nothing in the Constitution,
nor in any federal, state, or local law, prohibits private,
personal devotion. How could it? As one church-
owned newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor,
pointed out editorially, “The nice thing about pray-
ing — in school or anywhere else — is that Congress or
any other legislative body does not have to give anyone
the ‘right’ to do it. It’s an inherent right and privilege,
granted by an authority n:uch higher than any human
legislative or judicial body.”
The Monitor makes an excellent point, but even so,
many Americans will go on trying to get special status
for their conviction that all students should pray pub-
licly and be exposed to religious ideas and values
throughout each school day. Arkansas legislators have
passed a law to require the teaching of Biblical crea-
tionism in every public school in the state. Other state
legislatures and local school boards in other parts of
the country are following suit.
Americans also continue to consider abortion and
 Special Privilege and the First Amendment 77

birth control. After Congress and the states cut the use
of public money for abortion, more than a hundred
Protestant ministers and Jewish rabbis gathered in
Washington, D.C., to protest the reductions. The cler-
gymen wanted to ‘“‘remind” Congress that it is the legal
right of each woman — not of the government — to
decide whether to have an abortion. They argued that
drastically reducing public funding for abortion dis-
criminates against the poor by denying them medical
care available to middle- and upper-income women.
The clergymen also pointed out that by restricting
abortion, legislators violate the antiestablishment
clause of the First Amendment. Only a handful of
America’s many churches oppose abortion unless it is
absolutely necessary to save a woman’s life. Many
groups support a woman’s right to choose the opera-
tion under a wider variety of circumstances. A 1979
Gallup poll reveals that less than one fifth of Americans
flatly oppose abortion. Thus, antiabortion laws force
people of all religions to live by the doctrines of a few.
“The state is obligated to ensure that all religions are
respected equally before the law,”’ the protesting cler-
gymen said.
Many people feel that this argument also applies to
contraception. If people do not want to use birth con-
trol because their religion forbids it, that is their right.
But under the First Amendment, it is not their right to
compel others to do the same.
78 God and Government

Nevertheless, the religious convictions of those who

oppose birth control seem to be guiding government
policy today. Until recently, the federal government
spent millions of dollars each year on family-planning
programs. Much of the money went toward programs
for teen-agers. But when Ronald Reagan became pres-
ident, members of his administration declared their op-
position to such programs and reduced funding for
them. That may make birth control, like abortion, avail-
able to the rich but not to the poor. It also violates the
First Amendment by transforming the religious posi-
tion of a few churches into national policy.
The right-to-die issue will be coming in for public
debate, too. Medical know-how has raced far ahead of
lawmaking in this area. New medicines, improved
techniques, and sophisticated mechanical equipment
enable doctors to keep patients alive for weeks and
months — even years — longer than they used to. In
many cases, that means people can go on living happy
and useful lives despite serious illnesses.
In cases like that of Brother Joseph Charles Fox,
though, the results are less clear. Was Brother Fox
really alive as he lay in that Long Island hospital? The
people around him disagreed, and present-day law
gives no real answer. We need new laws to deal with
the rights of terminally ill patients, and with the rights
of their relatives and doctors, too.
One possibility is to give legal status to so-called liv-
 Sie

Special Privilege and the First Amendment 79

ing wills. Living wills enable people to decide, while

they are in good health, whether they want their lives
prolonged by ‘‘extraordinary measures” in the event of
a long-drawn-out terminal illness. They give individu-
als the opportunity to live — and die — according to
their own moral and religious convictions, not some-
one else’s.
A living will, however, would not permit the carry-
ing out of a mercy killing. In 1981 a New York court
backed up the idea behind living wills by ruling that a
relative or legal guardian may order a terminally ill pa-
tient taken off life-support systems if the patient is
mentally incompetent and if he has earlier expressed
the wish to be allowed to die.
Ensuring society against mercy killings was also the
concern of a presidential commission appointed in
1978 to study such ethical medical problems. In mid-
1981, the commission recommended that all fifty states
adopt laws that define death as the “irreversible cessa-
tion of all functions of the entire brain . . .”
After matters like the right to die and abortion, con-
flicts over a parent’s right to withhold medicine from a
sick child seem relatively simple to resolve. Hardly a
court in the land would fail to order any treatment nec-
essary to save life. (An exception is when the patient is
badly handicapped or brain-damaged. In the Massa-
chusetts case of the retarded leukemia victim, the
courts allowed the guardian to stop treatment. Courts
80 God and ‘Government

have ordered children to be given medicine and vacci-

nations over their parents’ objections. They have or-
dered blood transfusions for the children of Jehovah’s
Witnesses, and dismissed lawsuits by Christian Scien-
tists seeking to prevent fluoride, which medical evidence
shows helps prevent tooth decay, from being added to
public water supplies.
One judge summed up the American legal attitude
toward conflicts between a child’s welfare and the par-
ents’ right to exercise their religious beliefs:
“The right to practice religion freely does not include
liberty to expose the community or the child to com-
municable disease or the latter to ill health or death
. . . Parents may be free to become martyrs them-
selves. But it does not follow that they are free, in iden-
tical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children.”
Actually, American law does not even allow all
adults to become martyrs. Judges have ordered blood
transfusions for some Jehovah’s Witnesses who are of
legal age. In a case involving members of the Mormon
church, a justice of the Supreme Court said that a
widow would not have the legal right to commit sui-
cide, as once prescribed by Mormon law. In another
case, the court upheld state laws against snake han-
dling. Members of snake-handling sects believe their
religious faith will protect them as they grasp these
venomous creatures. But American courts hold that not
 ~S

Special Privilege and the First Amendment 81

even adults have an absolute right to endanger their

own lives for religious reasons in all cases.
Finally, what happened in the case of the two Detroit
men accused of the murder of Charles Williams, the
Jehovah’s Witness who died after refusing blood trans-
fusions? Charges against one of the two were dropped.
The man who fired the bullet that actually struck Wil-
liams, however, was charged with murder in the second
degree — assault with intent to commit murder.
After a year’s delay, the accused man, Timothy Mar-
shall, went on trial. His defense was that Williams had
died as a direct result of refusing transfusions and only
as an indirect result of the shooting. Questioning the
emergency room doctor, Marshall’s lawyer elicited the
opinion that Williams, but for his religious scruples,
would “‘probably” have survived the shooting.
In the end, Timothy Marshall was convicted of care-
less and reckless use of a firearm. But he was acquitted
of the more serious second-degree-murder charge.
According to his lawyer, Marshall will serve about
three and a half years in jail — a punishment for what
he did, not for another man’s religious convictions.
8. A Question of Cults

The Disciples of Christ is a Protestant denomination

with almost one and a half million members in the
United States. The church, which has its national head-
quarters in Indianapolis, is loosely organized; each of
its 4347 congregations is free to govern itself and ar-
range its worship services in its own way.
In 1965, the minister of one Disciples of Christ
church in Indiana decided to leave the Midwest and
head for California. Arriving in San Francisco, he es-
tablished a new church, which he called the People’s
Temple.
This minister had great ambitions for his Temple
and for the world. He believed that in time, mankind
would achieve complete racial harmony and social jus-
tice. Looking forward to that time, he organized his
church as a nonracist Christian-socialist group. Black
and white lived and worked together in the People’s
Temple, sharing food and material goods in communal
style.
Before long, the People’s Temple was attracting
 A Question of Cults 83

notice. News reporters wrote glowing stories about

its social aims and accomplishments. California welfare
authorities began placing homeless children in the
Temple’s care. The mayor of San Francisco appointed
the minister head of the city housing commission and
lesser members of the congregation were named to
other government jobs. The group flourished and by
the mid-1970s there were People’s Temple communes
as far away as Vancouver, British Columbia. Public
compliments about the group’s activities even came
from the nation’s vice president and its First Lady.
In 1978, the minister decided to move again, this
time to the South American nation of Guyana. There,
he and his thousand-odd followers established a town
in the jungle wilderness. There, they built homes, a
school, a library, and medical facilities. There, Temple
members, including the California foster children, lived
and worshiped together. And there, in November
1978, 911 members of the People’s Temple committed
mass suicide and murder, goaded into the grisly killings
by the ravings of their leader, the Reverend Jim Jones.
Shock and horror swept the nation as Americans
learned of the jungle massacre. Shock, horror, and a
question: What about the country’s other religious
cults? Might they one day prove as deadly as the Peo-
ple’s Temple?
The United States has many cults — as many as a
thousand, according to an estimate in U.S. News and
84 God and Government

World Report. The magazine also reports that up to

three million people — most of them in their teens and
twenties — belong to these cults.
One of the largest American cults is the Unification
Church, founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
About five thousand young Americans are full-time
members of this movement. The church’s $10 million
annual income is raised partly through donations and
partly by church members who run businesses, beg for
handouts, and sell novelty items in the streets.
Unification Church members are not like the mem-
bers of more conventional religious groups. They don’t
just show up for services once or twice a week and live
and work with friends and family the rest of the time.
Instead, the Unification Church becomes their whole
life. “Moonies” drop out of school or quit their jobs,
leave home, and go to live at “‘training centers” with
other cult members. They give away their personal be-
longings and turn their money over to Moon. Most
break completely-with family and friends.
Members of a Unification Church community have
little freedom of action. They are required to perform
whatever work their leader orders. They marry and
have children at his command. Cult members have no
freedom of thought, either. They must demonstrate
unquestioning faith in Moon’s theology, which one
writer has described as ‘“‘a mind-boggling mixture of
 A Question of Cults 85

pentecostal Christianity, Eastern mysticism, anti-commu-

nism, pop psychology, and metaphysics.”
According to Moon, God created Adam and Eve and
placed them in the Garden of Eden to become the par-
ents of a perfect race. They failed, as the book of Gen-
esis tells us. Later, God sent Jesus to redeem mankind,
but, says Moon, he died before fulfilling his mission.
Now God is sending a new messiah to save the world.
Although Moon does not actually say he himself is that
messiah, he does admit that the messiah was born in
1920 in the east-central Asian nation of Korea. Moon,
a native of South Korea, was born in 1920.
Naturally, people outside the Unification Church
find all this controversial. Devout Christians and Jews
see blasphemy in Moon’s thinly veiled claim to be the
messiah. Parents of Unification Church members see
their families broken up, destroyed. ““Our daughter is
not our daughter anymore,” said the mother of one
college girl who became a Moonie in 1974. Parents
don’t like to see their children impoverish themselves
by turning over all their possessions and money to the
cult. They note that while cult members are practically
paupers, Moon lives in a $750,000 mansion and is re-
ported to have $13 million salted away in his private
bank account.
People who live near Unification Church communi-
ties have other objections to the cult. They don’t like
 .

86 God and | Government

the constant begging and the insistent sales pitches.

Nor do they like it when Moonies begin to compete
with local businesses. In the seacoast town of Glouces-
ter, Massachusetts, Unification Church members set up
a commercial fishery. The Moonies do not pay them-
selves salaries for their work, so long-time Gloucester
fishermen fear the church members may begin to sell
their catch at extra-low prices. That would hurt the
local fishing industry.
The federal government has doubts of its own about
Sun Myung Moon. Some people in Washington suspect
that Moon’s religious activities may be a front for po-
litical activities. They know for sure that one branch of
the Unification Church, the Freedom Leadership Foun-
dation, openly tries to persuade government officials to
increase United States military and economic aid to
South Korea. A few members of Congress are con-
vinced that the church is closely linked to the South
Korean Central Intelligence Agency, a link that could
be illegal. It is a fact that two of Moon’s personal aides
were once colonels in the South Korean army.
The Unification Church’s probable ties to a foreign
nation make it unusual among religious cults. But in
other ways the church is a typical cult, and criticisms
of it are criticisms that are often made about other
cults.
Moon is not the only cult leader who seeks to isolate
converts and alienate them from their families. A for-
 A Question of Cults 87

mer member of a Hare Krishna community in San

Diego told reporters, “I always got along with my par-
ents. I was real close to them. But they [the Hare Krish-
nas] told me that my parents were influenced by
demons. That was very hard to take.”
Separating cult members from their families is just
one technique of the “brainwashing” that critics say is
a common practice in cults. Others include depriving
members of sleep, not giving them enough nourishing
food, and making them sit through hours of exhausting
religious rituals. Jim Jones used all these techniques on
members of the People’s Temple. The former Hare
Krishna told reporters the effect such techniques can
have: “They wake you up at 4:00 A.M. and you start
chanting over and over. You’re not really there, you’re
so tired. They pile on the spiritual answers but you
don’t have enough time to think about whether they
make sense.”
Once the cult leader has gained a kind of “‘mind con-
trol”? over a convert, he can be confident that his every
order will be carried out. “Every activity you do is
what they tell you to do,” the Hare Krishna explained.
It’s the same for Moonies and other cultists, the critics
say. Certainly it was that way for the 911 men,
women, and children who followed Jim Jones’s order
to destroy themselves and each other in Guyana.
That’s how it is for members of many cults. Charles
Dederich, leader of a religious cult known as Synanon,
88 God and Government

says, “I am not bound by the rules. I make them.” De-

derich tells his followers when to have children and
when not to, and they obey him. When he gave up
smoking, he forced his eighteen hundred disciples to
give it up, too. When his wife went on a diet, so did
everyone else in Synanon.
Eventually, a charismatic cult leader may gain so
much control over his people that he, and they, come
to believe he is no longer God’s mouthpiece, but God
himself. Jim Jones staged fake miracles to impress his
flock and claimed he could raise the dead. Apparently
he was believed. Sun Myung Moon delivers broad hints
about the identity of the new messiah. George Baker,
founder of a cult that won thousands of converts
among America’s black population fifty years ago,
called himself Father Divine. No wonder blasphemy is
a charge leveled at many a cult leader.
Another way in which the Unification Church is typ-
ical is that its leader surrounds himself with worldly
luxury while his followers labor and donate money to
support him. Moon is rich; Moonies are poor. Simi-
larly, Charles Dederich’s annual income is $100,000,
but ordinary Synanon members pay $400 a month to
live in one of the group’s communities. One woman
has given the church $1 million.
The same is true of the Church of Scientology,
founded in 1955 by a man named L. Ron Hubbard.
Hubbard began his career in the 1940s as a writer of
 A Question of Cults 89

science fiction, but even then he dreamed of a better

life. “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous,” he
once told a friend. “If a man really wanted to make a
million dollars, the best way would be to start his own
religion.” Hubbard has done both. So has the head of
the Worldwide Church of God, Herbert W. Armstrong.
Radio and television appeals have brought millions
upon millions of dollars into church headquarters in
Pasadena, California. Armstrong and his top aides live
and travel in high style, staying in the world’s finest
hotels, frequenting night clubs, decorating their homes
extravagantly, and concluding real-estate deals worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Cult members accept their leaders’ luxurious lives as
wholeheartedly as they accept their religious teachings
and day-by-day commands. “‘Why must a religious
leader be an ascetic???’ one Moonie wanted to know.
After all, he might have added, the Catholic church and
other churches, too, possess vast wealth.
Creating a public nuisance is another charge made
against the Unification Church and other cults. Street
begging and selling can be a nuisance, and so can cul-
tists’ determined efforts to win new converts. In some
cities, people are hardly able to walk down the street
without being buttonholed by eager young proselytiz-
ers. This worries parents who fear their children, too,
will fall under the influence of a cult.
Some cult leaders progress from creating a nuisance
 -

90 God and Government

to committing crimes. Charles Dederich struck back at

one attorney who brought a lawsuit against Synanon
by having a rattlesnake placed in his mailbox. The at-
torney was bitten, though not fatally. In another case,
five members of the Church of Scientology, including
Mrs. L. Ron Hubbard, were convicted of breaking into
government offices in order to steal records relating to
their cult.
The pattern of abuse in religious cults seems clear.
Crime, creating a nuisance, greed, blasphemy, despotic
control over people’s minds and lives — all are part of
the picture. Many Americans knew that long before
they ever heard of Jim Jones. But after the Guyana kill-
ings, thousands of people began asking if something
could — or should — be done to control cult activities.
To find out, Senator Robert Dole of Kansas opened
informal congressional hearings on the subject.
The hearings lasted only four hours. It took no more
time than that to demonstrate that anticult laws are
impossible under the U.S. Constitution.
Not that some witnesses at the hearing didn’t have
suggestions for legislation. Richard Delgado, professor
of law at the University of Washington, proposed laws
to force, street proselytizers to identify themselves and
their organizations clearly. It has been the practice of
cultists to talk to possible converts in very general
terms about “feeling dissatisfied” or “‘wanting a pur-
pose in life.” Only when converts are actually in cult
 A Question of Cults 9x

headquarters, cut off from their families and mentally

and physically exhausted by religious brainwashing,
may they realize they have committed themselves to a
cult.
Delgado had other suggestions. Proselytizers could
be required to apply for government licenses. Would-
be converts might have to wait through a “cooling-off”
period before formally joining a cult. Finally, new laws
could allow the courts to force converts to undergo
psychiatric treatment aimed at getting them to re-
nounce the cult. This treatment would resemble the
‘““deprogramming” that the families of some cult mem-
bers have turned to in an attempt to overcome the ef-
fects of cult brainwashing upon their children. Cult
members who are deprogrammed may be forcibly ab-
ducted, locked up, and made to listen to hours upon
hours of questions and statements that challenge cult
teachings. Deprogramming is highly controversial. One
professional deprogrammer has been sentenced to jail
for his activities, which many see as violating the reli-
gious freedom of cultists. Yet at Senator Dole’s hear-
ing, people were suggesting that Congress make depro-
gramming mandatory in some cases.
What would be wrong with laws like these? The first
problem: deciding which groups to apply them to.
What is a cult, anyway?
Webster’s dictionary defines cult as a system of wor-
ship of a deity; the rites of a religion; or great devotion
 ~

92 God and Government

to some person, idea, or thing. The same dictionary

says religion is the service and adoration of God or a
god; a system of faith and worship; an awareness or
conviction of the existence of a supreme being, arous-
ing reverence, love, gratitude, the will to serve and
obey.
What, based on those definitions, is the difference
between a cult and a religion?
People have tried to come up with answers. A genu-
ine religious group is large, they say, like this country’s
forty-nine-million-member Catholic church, or its Lu-
theran churches, with their ten million members. Cults,
by contrast, are small, claiming at most a few thousand
devotees.
That is not a very valid distinction. Abraham, the fa-
ther of Judaism, set forth for the Promised Land with
his wife, his nephew, and a handful of followers. Chris-
tianity began with Jesus and his twelve disciples. Ob-
viously, the size of a religious group has little to do
with its quality.
Well, then, people say, you can tell a cult from a real
religion because cultists go in for bizarre beliefs and
actions. Hare Krishnas shave their heads, wear long
robes, and chant in the streets. Moonies reject their
middle-class values and go begging. Members of the
cult of Wicca practice witchcraft.
Yet most people accept Christian Science as a “‘real”’
religion — and what could be odder than for intelli-
 A Question of Cults —_93

gent, loving parents to allow a child to die of pneu-

monia for lack of ordinary penicillin? Mormons are
respected as sober, industrious, law-abiding citizens,
but a century ago, Mormons practiced polygamy out
of religious conviction. Even today, a few Mormon
men have more than one wife, although the Mormon
church has officially condemned polygamy since the
end of the nineteenth century. Jews and Protestants
find it hard to accept that Catholics believe bread and
wine turn into the body and blood of Jesus during the
sacrament of communion. Christians wonder at the
Orthodox Jewish prohibition against eating meat and
milk together— or even eating them at different times
from the same dishes. Every religion has beliefs or rit-
uals that people outside the faith find unusual. Oddity
is no standard for identifying cults.
What about the test of time? Mormonism, Christian
Science, and Judaism have been around for years. The
Unification Church and Scientology have not. Perhaps
longevity is the way to distinguish between a religion
and a cult.
But a Christian will tell you that the teachings of
Jesus were as valid in A.D. 33 as they are today. And a
Moonie will answer that since Sun Myung Moon is the
new messiah, 1982 is the same for the Unification
Church as A.D. 33 was for the Christian. Of course, the
Moonie may not believe that ten or twenty years from
now. By then the Unification Church may no longer
 ~

94 God and Government

exist. But that doesn’t settle the question for right now.
In a few decades, Moon’s church could be one of the
world’s major religions. Is it a cult or isn’t it?
Even if we should decide that the Unification Church
and certain other groups were cults, the government
would have trouble using anticult laws against them.
Suppose Congress did pass legislation requiring mem-
bers of specified religious groups to obtain licenses to
proselytize. It’s a safe bet that someone would violate
the law. Sooner or later, an unlicensed missionary
would be arrested and brought to trial.
Almost any judge would throw the case out of court
on the grounds that the licensing law was a triple vio-
lation of the First Amendment. Such a law would limit
a cultist’s freedom of speech. It would also take away
his freedom to practice his religion, since many cults
require their members to seek converts. In addition, by
discriminating against so-called cults, the law would
make an establishment of those religions whose active
members do not-have to be licensed. Other anticult
laws along the lines of those suggested by Professor
Delgado would surely get similar treatment in court.
Still, it must be possible to do something to control
cults, especially cults as deadly as the People’s Temple
turned out to be. After the Guyana killings, some
Americans criticized the Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion for failing to heed rumors that Jones was insane,
heavily armed, and a menace to those around him.
 A Question of Cults 95

They said the FBI ought to have infiltrated the Temple

in San Francisco and gathered hard evidence of illegal
activities there. Yet if the FBI had become involved, one
agent scoffed, ‘“‘Can’t you just hear the roar?”
The roar would have been tremendous if the FBI had
been caught trying to spy on the cult, of course. But
California social workers would have been within their
rights to have looked more carefully into the cult be-
fore placing foster children there.
There are laws that can be applied to religious
groups without infringing on their liberties. Health and
sanitary codes are enforced for schools, businesses, res-
taurants, libraries — just about anywhere people con-
gregate. They apply to churches, too, and can be
especially helpful in safeguarding those who live in cult
communities, where conditions are often overcrowded.
Police agencies could have looked into the charge
that the People’s Temple was accumulating illegal
weapons. Guns can be dangerous whether they are
handled by Catholics, Protestants, Jews, members of
the People’s Temple, atheists, or self-styled witches. It
is not a violation of the First Amendment to require
religious groups— all religious groups — to obey the
law of the land.
Laws that require parochial schools to meet state ed-
ucation standards are valid, and can be used to help
protect children and young adults from cultists’ brain-
washing techniques. Tax-exemption laws should be the
 ~

96 God and Government

same for all religions. As we have seen, the federal gov-

ernment has fought exemptions for such church-owned
businesses as the Christian Brothers winery. It is not
discriminatory for it to oppose exemptions for money-
making activities by cults.
Laws to protect people’s civil rights can also be
equally enforced. A North Carolina minister, head of
the Church of God and True Holiness, and two of his
followers are now in federal prisons, convicted on
charges of keeping other church members in slavery,
beating them, and forcing them to work at menial jobs.
The three were tried under antislavery laws. That’s
hardly discriminatory. No religious institution in the
country can be permitted to enforce slave labor. Nor
can any church leader be permitted to mete out “cruel
and unusual punishment” the way Jim Jones did and
others have. Cruel and unusual punishment is uncon-
stitutional under the Eighth Amendment.
But although applying laws already on the books to
cults and other religious groups may not be discrimi-
natory, it won’t be easy, either. That is because when-
ever government tries to regulate the activities of even
one small sect, it runs into the united opposition of
nearly all of America’s largest and most influential re-
ligious groups.
In 1979, the attorney general of the state of Califor-
nia began an investigation into the possible misuse or
theft of funds from the Worldwide Church of God by
 A Question of Cults 97

the group’s founder, Herbert Armstrong. The attorney

general asked a California court to appoint someone
outside the church to take over temporary control of
its financial affairs. The court did so.
Armstrong fought the court action vigorously. In
full-page ads in newspapers around the country, he de-
manded: |
“Can you imagine the attorney general overseeing
the spending of the Roman Catholic Church in Califor-
nia?
“Would he have attacked the Methodist Church, the
Presbyterian or Lutheran?
“Would he. have undertaken to raid a synagogue?
“Will he?”
Armstrong’s implication was clear. If government
acts against one sect, it can act against any.
Clergymen of many faiths thought Armstrong’s point
was well taken. The Catholic Church and several Prot-
estant groups, including the National Council of
Churches, filed legal briefs in behalf of the Worldwide
Church of God and against the California court’s ac-
tion.
The publicity that resulted from the legal action may
well have helped Armstrong’s cause. In 1980, Califor-
nia passed a law making it impossible for state author-
ities to investigate church finances except in obviously
criminal cases.
Six months later, three hundred representatives of
 .

98 God and Government

ninety of America’s organized religions gathered in the

nation’s capital for a three-day conference. They were
there to discuss church-state relations and the role gov-
ernment plays in regulating religious activity.
The delegates talked about tax exemptions for reli-
gious organizations, and about government efforts to
limit some of those exemptions. They examined state
and federal regulations on health and safety, education,
and employment, and they wondered what effect they
might have on churches. Over and over, the delegates
asked each other, “Does government regulation
threaten religious freedom in the United States today?”’
The conferees could not agree on an answer. One
Presbyterian representative said he did not believe that
any one single regulatory action poses a danger. “But,”
he added, “the pattern that they form when viewed to-
gether is an alarming one, and that is why we are
ete
Other speakers acknowledged that government must
act to protect public health and safety. A Methodist
minister concluded that in the light of what happened
at the People’s Temple in Guyana, he could justify
“some kind of intervention.” But it was a professor of
law from Fordham University, a Catholic college in
New York, who summed it up best. “There is no evi-
dence of any concerted attack on the church,” he de-
clared. “But the government has posed certain enigmas
for us.”
 A Question of Cults 99

The government has. At the same time, churches,

with all their diverse beliefs and rituals, pose enigmas
for government.
When, if ever, is government interference in religion
justified? The California state government had to back
off its investigation into the Worldwide Church of
God. More recently, a federal grand jury began looking
into charges of financial misdoings by John Cardinal
Cody, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Chicago.
Should that investigation have been allowed? Late in
1981, the United States government charged the Rev-
erend Sun Myung Moon with tax evasion. Was the
charge legitimate — or just a way of “getting at” an
unorthodox cult leader?
Can government intervention in religion ever be
justified? Perhaps not. Shady financial doings — even
the tragedy of a Jim Jones — may be the price we must
pay for our religious liberty.
No one — not the wisest statesman nor the most de-
vout ecclesiastic — can tell for sure.
9, Religious Rights Versus
the Religious Right

Twice in American history a wave of Christian reviv-

alism has swept the country. In the 1730s, a young
Massachusetts minister named Jonathan Edwards be-
gan preaching a fiery brand of Calvinism, exhorting his
listeners to abandon their sinful ways and return to the
paths of righteousness. There followed the Great
Awakening, during which thousands of New England
men and women rededicated themselves to God and
Christ. Before long, the revival spirit reached into the
Middle Atlantic and Southern colonies. The Great
Awakening lasted well into the 1760s.
Nearly a century later, America underwent another
religious revival. This Second Awakening was led by
Charles G. Finney, a Presbyterian minister who later
turned to Congregationalism. Finney preached in New
York City and, after becoming president of Oberlin
College, in Ohio. He also made several trips to En-
gland. Wherever he spoke, people listened, and again,
Americans experienced a spiritual renewal.
Now another revival is under way. It seems possible
 ~

Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 101

that the 1980s will go down in history as the time of

America’s third great awakening.
In part, the new revival is a reaction to years of de-
clining interest in religious and spiritual matters. In
1960, 64 percent of all Americans were church mem-
bers. By 1977, that figure had dropped to 61 percent.
But even more, the revival is a response to changes in
American society.
Many of the changes have been in the home, within
the family. A century ago, a man was the undisputed
head of his household; his wife generally obeyed his
bidding. Few women worked outside the home and
only a tiny number had any professional training or
advanced education. Divorce was rare and it was illegal
for a woman to have an abortion.
Men were masters of their children, too, and most
boys and girls were as obedient as their mothers.
Young men often worked for their fathers, on the farm
or in the family business, long after they reached adult-
hood.
Things are different today. Millions of teen-agers
have weekend or after-school jobs. Many can afford to
travel, own cars, or educate themselves. Women have
entered the working world of business and factory and
are more and more prominent in the professions. A
woman can obtain an abortion without her husband’s
knowledge or divorce him against his will.
Other changes have occurred in society at large.
102 God and Government

Once, white people owned blacks as slaves, and even

after slavery was abolished, blacks continued to be
treated as second-class citizens. Millions of blacks were
denied a good education, decent homes, well-paying
jobs, and the opportunity to mingle with whites, as
well as being kept from voting and holding office. Even
today, blacks and members of other minority groups
may face unfair and unequal treatment. But laws
passed in the 1960s and 1970s do seek to guarantee
them the right to vote, use public facilities, go to col-
lege, and get good jobs.
Social programs are another change. Fifty years ago,
state and federal governments did little to help the
country’s elderly, sick, and needy. Now governments
do more, helping to provide food, clothing, shelter,
medicine, jobs, and education to people who could not
otherwise afford these things. With prices going up and
jobs becoming hard to find, social service programs are
important to millions of Americans.
Other changes involve the law. Courts are more
careful than they used to be to guard the rights of peo-
ple accused of crimes. In 1972, the Supreme Court
threw out state death-penalty laws, declaring them un-
fair and unconstitutional. (Since then, though, several
states have passed new laws that are acceptable under
the Constitution to require capital punishment for cer-
tain crimes.)
America’s relations with other nations have changed
 Ss

Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 103

too. Only a short time ago, most Americans thought of

communist nations like the Soviet Union and the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China as deadly and implacable ene-
mies. Today, presidents welcome Chinese and Soviet
leaders to the White House. Through the United Na-
tions and other international agencies, the United
States reaches out to communist and noncommunist
nations alike with cultural exchanges, foreign aid, and
trade arrangements.
Changes like these seem to be due to many different
factors. Improved transportation and communications
have brought nations closer together, and modern
weapons, including nuclear weapons, make many
countries eager to avoid war. Through books, news-
papers, radio, and television, Americans know that
miscarriages of justice can occur under the best of laws,
and many are more alert to the need to protect the
rights of the accused. News reporting has made appar-
ent the injustice of racial segregation. It has shown
what it is like to live in poverty and given millions of
affluent Americans a sense of responsibility toward the
less fortunate. Within families, economic pressures,
such as the pressure of inflation, are forcing more and
more women to work outside the home.
Economics, news coverage, social awareness, modern
technology — all these and more seem to have helped
bring about change in our society.
Or have they?
104 God and Government

Millions of people would answer that question with

a vehement no. According to them, our society has
changed as we Americans have turned away from God.
The changes—and the problems that accompany
some of them — are signs of God’s anger.
Take the changes within families. When women
obeyed their husbands in all things, they, and their hus-
bands, felt they were obeying God. ‘““Women, submit
yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the
Lord,” St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians, one
of the books of the New Testament. Similarly, the Old
Testament instructs children to obey their parents.
“Honor thy father and thy mother,” says the Fifth
Commandment.
But Americans have rejected the word of God. Wives
and children no longer submit and obey, and the re-
sults, many believe, are plain to see. Divorce. Adultery.
Teen-age runaways. Drug abuse. Unmarried mothers.
Abortion.
In the same way, some think the Bible orders racial
segregation. To them, a dark skin is the mark of Cain,
the murderer. When God set Cain apart from other
men, he established segregation. The push toward in-
tegration, which is contrary to the will of God, has
helped bring about agitation for civil rights, “forced”
busing, and occasional big-city rioting, they say.
Several passages in the Bible demand harsh punish-
ments for lawbreakers. “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth,
 BS

Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 105

hand for hand, foot for foot,’’ God told Moses, but we
reject such ideas of retribution. The result? Convicted
criminals, some free on parole, others because of legal
technicalities or crowded court calendars, roam the
streets. The violent-crime rate is rising.
Nor does the Bible condone government assistance
to the needy. God put man on this earth to labor and
support himself and his family by the sweat of his face.
Many contend that social service programs thwart
God’s plan by encouraging people to sit around and let
the government provide for their needs.
What of our relations with communist nations?
Most communist governments discourage religion or
try to suppress it altogether. Many believe the United
States should shun ‘‘godless communism” and thereby
set an example of righteousness, morality, and the fear
of God.
What has caused the changes — and the problems —
in our society? Are they a punishment from God? Or
are they due to forces like economics and material pro-
gress?
Religious leaders, politicians, social scientists, writ-
ers, and others may debate such questions, but while
they talk, others react. One reaction is the new spirit
of revivalism evident around the country.
Signs of the revival are everywhere. Eighty million
Americans consider themselves “evangelicals,” who
have been “‘born again” in Christ. Elected politicians,
 ~

106 God and Government

from U.S. presidents to local school board members,

emphasize their faith and their reliance upon divine
guidance. Churches are enlarging their facilities to pro-
vide more space for worship services and Sunday-
school activities. In 1981, Christian schools were open-
ing at the rate of three a day and some Jewish schools
were increasing enrollments, too. Church attendance is
up, just as it was in the days of Jonathan Edwards and
Charles Finney.
Other signs of the revival are more typically twen-
tieth-century. Religious slogans — ‘“‘Honk If You Love
Jesus’ and “Smile, God Loves You” — adorn auto-
mobile bumpers. Sales of religious medals and other
symbols are booming. Above all, there is the huge
growth of electronic evangelism, the spreading of the
Christian gospel via radio and television.
Electronic evangelism is the tool used by some two
thousand American preachers to call sinners to repen-
tance. It’s a tool that works. By one estimate, 114 mil-
lion Americans listen to radio preachers each week.
(This estimate comes from religious broadcasters them-
selves, and many believe it is exaggerated.) Thirteen
hundred radio stations, one out of every seven com-
mercial stations in the country, is a ““Christian”’ station.
In addition, gospel hours are aired on stations that are
not officially ““Christian.”
Television is essential to electronic evangelism. The
Christian Broadcasting Network, founded by the Rev-
 Sy

Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 107

erend Pat Robertson, owns a satellite transmitter that

beams religious programming to 4 of its own channels
and to 150 other stations. Another evangelist, the Rev-
erend Jerry Falwell, claims to reach eighteen million
Americans each week over 379 television and 400 ra-
dio stations. When Oral Roberts, an Oklahoma-based
preacher, goes on television with one of his religious
variety specials, he can count on upward of sixty mil-
lion viewers.
Electronic evangelists, backed up by huge choirs, lav-
ish sets, and elaborate stage effects, are adept at win-
ning converts. They are skilled at raising money, too.
Contributions from viewers of Oral Roberts’s pro-
grams have enabled him to build a $150 million uni-
versity and a $100 million medical center in Tulsa.
Jerry Falwell raises $1 million a week, and Bill Bright,
head of the Campus Crusade for Christ, takes in twice
that. Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network
raises millions annually. It has to, just to cover its op-
erating expenses of $20 million a year.
Many Americans, including a lot of sincere Chris-
tians, feel that electronic evangelism puts too much em-
phasis on fund raising and relies too heavily on the
techniques of show business and the advertising indus-
try. Another aspect of the new revival disturbs them
even more. That aspect has been dubbed the “religious
right.”
The name describes the movement well. It is reli-
 .

108 cor and Government

gious, made up almost entirely of fundamentalist born-

again Protestants. It is also “right-wing,” or conserva-
tive, in its social and political views. It is strongly
opposed to liberal or “left-wing” ideas.
One leader of the religious right is Jerry Falwell. Be-
sides preaching on radio and television, Falwell is the
minister of a seventeen-thousand-member Baptist
church in Lynchburg, Virginia. In June 1979 Falwell
organized the Moral Majority, a nationwide group of
72,000 fundamentalist clergymen. Another prominent
member of the religious right is Richard Zone, founder
of the two-thousand-member Christian Voice. Evange-
lists Pat Robertson, James Robison, and Jim Bakker
are also active in the movement.
The message Americans hear from Falwell and the
others is simple. America has turned away from God.
Our society has changed — for the worse. Controver-
sies over abortion, crime, welfare, and so on are a re-
sult of God’s judgment upon a sinful nation. The
problems in our society exist because God is punishing
America for its iniquities.
“We must turn from our wicked ways!’’ thunders
James Robison. “If America does not go to her knees,
she’ll go to her grave,” warns a Chicago evangelist, Del
Fehsenfeld. Jerry Falwell concurs. “The future of the
nation is in your hands and mine,” he told his fellow
ministers in Dallas, Texas, at a 1980 convention of
evangelists there.
 Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 109

The religious right seeks to replace American law

with God’s law as they believe that law is laid down in
the Bible. “The Bible is God’s rule book,” says evan-
gelist Howard Phillips. Accordingly, the religious right
is pressing for one new constitutional amendment
against abortion, which it believes the Bible condemns,
and another new one to require school prayer, which
it says the Bible demands. At the same time the Moral
Majority and other groups are working to defeat the
proposed constitutional Equal Rights Amendment
(ERA), which would guarantee women the same civil
and political rights men enjoy. In the evangelists’ view,
the Bible orders women to serve men, not act as their
equals. The religious right wants to see an end to sex-
education courses and government programs to pro-
vide birth-control information to women. It wants new
laws to outlaw homosexuality and to keep homo-
sexuals from working at certain jobs.
The leaders of the religious right also accuse courts
of “coddling” criminals and they want to institute new,
stricter legal proceedings based on Old Testament law.
They want to cut back on the legal rights of minors
and on the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of
speech and the press. They want a federal death pen-
alty for murder, rape, kidnaping, and treason. One
fundamentalist minister has even called for the capital
punishment of homosexuals.
The religious right opposes government social service
 .

IIo God and Government

programs and its leaders demand an end to much of

the public aid that millions of Americans need. They
believe God gave the earth to man so man could have
dominion over nature and use it as he wished. From
this they conclude that present-day government regu-
lation of business and industry — including rules aimed
at preserving the environment — is wrong. They also
maintain that the Bible commands government leaders
to keep public budgets balanced, to make sure govern-
ment spends no more money than it raises through
taxes. As a matter of fact, the United States budget has
only been balanced in one year since 1964, and it was
sometimes unbalanced before that. In the first year of
George Washington’s administration, for example, fed-
eral expenses outran receipts by $60,000. Now that
must stop, says the religious right, because God de-
mands it. “We can talk about a balanced budget as a
moral issue because the Bible says ‘you should not live
in debt,’ ”’ says Richard Zone.
God is displeased with what the United States is
doing on the international scene, too, says the religious
right. According to its interpretation of the Bible, God
wants America to get tough with “‘godless” communist
countries. “Giving in to the Soviet Union is not com-
patible with the Judeo-Christian heritage told in the
Bible,” one speaker told the evangelists at the 1980
Dallas convention. Instead of “giving in,” as the reli-
gious right believes we have been doing, the United
 S

Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 111

States should build up its arsenals of nuclear and non-

nuclear weapons and prepare for war.
The leaders of the religious right know what they
want for America. What’s more, they believe they have
found the way to get it. Their plan is to fill the nation’s
political offices with people who completely share their
point of view. In the late 1970s, conservative religious
groups began a campaign to turn the nation’s liberal
senators, representatives, governors, state legislators,
and mayors out of office and to replace them with po-
litical and religious conservatives. This campaign has
been remarkably effective, as the 1980 election dem-
onstrated.
The religious right began by “‘targeting” a number of
politicians it wanted to see thrown out of office. Some
were targeted because they favored government fund-
ing for abortions, others because they opposed school
prayer or expressed support for the Equal Rights
Amendment or for a federal department of education.
Men like Falwell made it clear that if a politician op-
posed the religious right’s position on only one issue,
that politician was nonetheless marked for defeat. As
an aide to one targeted senator, Frank Church of
Idaho, pointed out, the religious right assumes that “if
you’re not 100 percent for them, you must be roo per-
cent against them.”
Armed with its hit list, the religious right went to
work. Many of the nation’s electronic evangelists came
 *

Nips God and Government

on the air week after week to remind listeners that God

is angry at America and that only if the country turns
to Jesus Christ and the Bible will Americans be happy
and prosperous again. Regulations of the federal gov-
ernment forbid the leaders of tax-exempt religious or-
ganizations to endorse candidates on the air, but the
crusading evangelists manage to get around that re-
striction. Groups like the Moral Majority are divided
into separate branches, one for education, another for
legal action on religious issues, a third to promote gov-
emment support for fundamentalist views, and a
fourth to endorse political candidates. Falwell can con-
demn America’s “immorality” from the pulpit on Sun-
day and then let the political arm of the Moral
Majority endorse “morally sound” candidates at polit-
ical gatherings during the rest of the week. Government
regulations against churches becoming involved in pol-
itics don’t apply to endorsements made in this way.
The national leadership of the religious right found
plenty of support for its campaign against liberalism.
Around the country, thousands of ministers, and some
priests and a few rabbis, too, did their part to promote
the conservative cause. Falwell offered Moral Majority
members advice on how to influence lawmaking.
““Here’s what you do,” he told Florida clergymen op-
posed to the Equal Rights Amendment. ‘You tell
everybody in your congregation to bring two stamped
envelopes to church on Sunday. You show them a
 Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 113

couple of sample letters.’”” The samples would express

Opposition to the ERA and threaten state politicians
with defeat at the polls if they supported it. Falwell
continued: “Make them write those letters in
church . . . Do it right during the service.”
Falwell had other suggestions for ministers. ““You
can register people to vote,” he said. “You can explain
the issues to them. And you can endorse candidates,
right there in church on Sunday morning.”
All this, the religious right did in 1980. The Moral
Majority alone claims credit for registering four million
new conservative voters before the 1980 election. It
spent $3 million on just six races for the United States
Senate. Besides that, the Moral Majority and similar
right-wing religious organizations were involved in
hundreds of other elections on every level of govern-
ment.
Their efforts paid off. The presidential candidate fa-
vored by the religious right, conservative Republican
Ronald Reagan, soundly defeated Democrat Jimmy
Carter. Frank Church, targeted by the Moral Majority
in Idaho, lost his seat in Congress. So did liberal sena-
tors and representatives in other states. Conservative
governors and mayors replaced liberal ones in many
places, and the political balance of several state houses
also shifted to the right.
Immediately after the election, the religious right got
to work planning for future victories. On November ro,
114 God and Government

1980, Jerry Falwell spoke at a religious-political rally

on the steps of the New Jersey state capitol. There he
offered advice to New Jersey lawmakers. Officehold-
ers, Falwell said, ‘““would do well to examine their rec-
ords and get in step with conservative values or be
prepared to be unemployed.”
The religious right hopes to affect other aspects of
our lives. One of its goals is to eliminate what it con-
siders pornography in books and magazines as well as
on television and in the movies.
Religious groups in many parts of the country are
urging people to avoid X- and R-rated movies, and to
stop buying products advertised on television shows
they think objectionable. This boycott strategy has
worked before in television and it may well work
again. In June 1981, Procter & Gamble, the household
products company that is television’s biggest advertiser,
announced it was withdrawing its commercials from
fifty programs deemed offensive by the religious right.
When network executives announced their new pro-
grams for the fall of 1981, observers noted a swing
away from the sexually suggestive material that was so
popular in previous seasons.
The religious right believes in censoring books, too.
The American Library Association reports that in the
month after the 1980 election, efforts to ban library
books increased 500 percent. Censorship requests in-
volved works by such individuals as John Steinbeck,
 Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 115

Philip Roth, Judy Blume, and William Shakespeare. In

one case, a religious group succeeded in removing from
library shelves a volume called Making It with Made-
moiselle. Obviously, the censors had not bothered to
look at the book; it contained sewing instructions com-
piled by the staff of Mademoiselle magazine!
In some places, members of the religious right de-
mand that librarians publicize the names of borrowers
of “objectionable” books and materials. A Washington
state branch of the Moral Majority went to court to
try to force the state library to disclose the identities of
schools that had used a library film on sex education.
Many Americans find the idea of any church or reli-
gious organization — or any organization for that mat-
ter — checking up on Americans’ reading and viewing
habits terrifying. But checking up is exactly what the
religious right is doing.
Does the religious right threaten American liberties?
Consider the. words of one conservative minister, Ben
Patterson of California. “Why go through the incon-
venience of having to live with diversity when you can
organize your own group, and perhaps use the instru-
ments of power to impose the will of your group on
everyone else?” he wrote.
The religious right threatens American liberties, not
because it wants moral standards, but because it claims
that only one set of standards, its own, is acceptable to
God. The religious right would compel every person in
 ~

116 God and Government

the country to abide by its definitions of right and

wrong. Its leaders have said publicly that God will not
tolerate even the smallest deviation from their funda-
mentalist morality. Only when Americans cast off their
false values will God smile upon the nation again.
Sound familiar? It should. The religious right echoes
John Calvin’s dictum of four hundred years ago: “The
punishments executed upon false prophets, and seduc-
ing teachers, do bring down the showers of God’s
blessings upon the civil state.”
Like Calvin, and like many of America’s early colo-
nists, the leaders of the religious right believe in theo-
cratic government. They want to see a perfect union
between church and state. They are trying to bring
about the precise opposite of what the writers of the
Constitution planned for the country.
The church-state envisioned by the religious right
would be unconstitutional on several grounds, say
its critics. Insistence on religious conformity among
elected officials defies Article VI of the Constitution,
which prohibits any religious test for office. Turning
fundamentalist religious belief into law would violate
the First Amendment’s antiestablishment clause. And if
religious intolerance toward nonfundamentalists grows,
the free exercise of religion could be limited in the
United States.
The religious right denies that its aims are uncon-
stitutional. Its leaders say they are tolerant of other
 oS
=~

Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 117

religions, pointing out that some members of both

Christian and non-Christian faiths agree with them on
some issues.
Nor do they believe that putting their moral stan-
dards into law would amount to an establishment of
religion. After all, laws are supposed to incorporate
moral standards. America, like every other nation, has
laws against murder. Why not laws against abortion,
too, since many consider abortion a form of killing?
The religious right also reminds its critics that Ameri-
can religious leaders have always been involved in pol-
itics. Charles Finney, for instance, abhorred America’s
system of slavery, and the Second Awakening helped
bring about the antislavery abolitionist movement.
During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, members of the
clergy were active in the drive for civil rights, and many
worked for an end to American fighting in the war in
Vietnam. Many times religious groups have had a de-
cisive influence on elections, lawmaking, and public
policy.
As for the charge that the religious right seeks to im-
pose religious tests for office, that is silly, its leaders
say. Naturally voters are going to examine a candi-
date’s positions before casting their ballots. That is
their right, and their duty, as responsible citizens of a
democracy.
It is not that simple, critics of the religious right
respond. Clergymen of the religious right don’t just
 ~

118 God and Government

inform church members about political issues. They tell

them exactly where God wants them to stand on each
issue, and turn church services into political action
meetings. They don’t just say they think one candidate
is better than another; they label candidates they op-
pose “‘wicked” or ‘“‘sinful.”” According to Representa-
tive Michael L. Synar of Oklahoma, some leaders of
the religious right actually conspire to set up liberal
politicians ahead of time so they will be sure to fail
religious tests for office when the next election comes
around.
For example, Synar says, before the 1980 election,
the Moral Majority and other groups got sympathetic
members of Congress to submit proposals for ex-
tremely conservative new laws — proposals they knew
had no chance of passing. Congressman Synar, like
many congressional liberals and moderates, voted
against the proposals. The Moral Majority’s political
action branch recorded how each senator and represen-
tative voted in each case. Months later, the records
were used against targeted candidates.
Such long-term, highly organized tactics by religious
groups are new to American politics. Church-related
civil rights and antiwar organizations did not set up
legislators in order to have political ammunition to use
against them at a later date. More similar to the reli-
gious right’s tactics were some of the anti-Catholic
campaigns of the past, especially those employed in the
 Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 119

1928 and 1960 elections. But even the radical anti-

Catholics of a few decades ago lacked the present-day
religious right’s advantage of sophisticated advertising
techniques, electronic fund raising, coast-to-coast
broadcasting networks, and computerized mailing lists.
The critics also maintain that by working for laws
that embody its specific moral positions, the religious
right truly does threaten to establish itself as an official
religion. Laws against murder cannot be equated with
laws against abortion, they say. Nearly all people in all
times and places have agreed that murder is wrong, but
there is no such general agreement on abortion. Still
less do people agree on the morality or immorality of
birth control, divorce, homosexuality, environmental-
ism, welfare, or the economics of communism.
Critics also question the religious right’s contention
that it respects the beliefs of other faiths. Instead of
respect, they see signs of prejudice and bigotry.
At the 1980 Dallas convention of fundamentalists,
Dr. Bailey Smith, president of the Southern Baptist
Convention, spoke to his fellow evangelists about reli-
gious observances at political events. “It is interesting,”
Smith mused, ‘‘at great political rallies how you have
a Protestant to pray, a Catholic to pray, and then you
have a Jew to pray. With all due respect . . . my
friends, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a
JEW
So much for Jews. If God doesn’t hear them, why
I20 God and Government

should they bother to pray? If Jews aren’t going to

pray, why should they have synagogues? It’s not a very
big step from “‘God does not hear the prayer of a Jew”
to “‘Let’s not let Jews pray,” as many Jewish survivors
of the time of the Nazi Holocaust will testify.
About a month after he made that statement, Smith
denied that he was anti-Semitic. As he explained it, “I
am pro-Jew. . . but without Jesus Christ they are lost.
No prayer gets through that is not prayed through
Jesus Christ.” Later, in a broadcast sermon, Smith
remarked to a national audience, “Jews have funny-
looking noses.” Again, an explanation was forthcom-
ing; Smith said he was joking. He may have been, but
few Jews were laughing. They knew Smith is not the
only fundamentalist who has made anti-Jewish re-
marks. And they know that nationwide, anti-Semitic
attacks increased threefold between 1979 and 1980.
Jews are not the only ones who may run into preju-
dice from the religious right. At a recent Bible confer-
ence organized by James Robison, fundamentalist Dr.
Curtis Hutson was scheduled to share a platform with
Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly, a religious and political con-
servative, opposes the Equal Rights Amendment and
has campaigned against it around the country. Hutson
is also against the ERA, and he and Schlafly agree on
other issues. But Schlafly is a Catholic, and when Hut-
son learned that he was to appear with her, he with-
drew from the conference. “I cannot speak at a Bible
 se

Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 121

conference with a Roman Catholic lady,” he an-

nounced.
Catholics . . . Jews . . . who else might experience
intolerance from the religious right? Unitarians who
deny the Trinity? Episcopalians who believe in evolu-
tion? Congregationalists who do not think every word
in the Bible is to be taken literally? Fundamentalists
with liberal political ideas?
It could happen. And there are fundamentalists,
along with Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Unitari-
ans, and others, who are very much aware of that fact.
In fact, some of the most outspoken critics of the reli-
gious right are born-again Christians. They welcome
the religious revival spirit of the 1980s in general, but
they worry about the growing influence of the religious
right upon that revival.
Some are dismayed by the religious right’s preoccu-
pation with military affairs. One participant at the
1980 Dallas convention reminded people that Jesus
Christ was a peacemaker. He criticized the religious
right’s emphasis on power in this world. “They are
confusing being a Christian soldier with being a United
States soldier,” he commented.
Others agree that, for all its talk about the will of
God, the religious right actually puts its faith in human
systems — in manmade weapons, in court-imposed
censorship, in stricter laws, in religious conformity en-
forced by the state. It seems to them that the Moral
 —

722 God and Government

Majority, Christian Voice, and similar groups are more

concerned with earthly power than with spiritual mat-
ters.
Billy Graham is one born-again Christian with seri-
ous doubts about the religious right. Graham is a mis-
sionary and perhaps the best-known evangelist in the
world. But he sees danger in the religious right’s stress
on preparation for war. He is troubled by its lack of
interest in such problems as world hunger. “How can
we be indifferent to the millions and millions who live
on the brink of starvation each year, while the nations
of the world spend $550 billion each year on weap-
ons?”’? Graham asked an audience of religious broad-
casters in 1981. Graham also speaks out against the
religious right’s pride in its accomplishments, including
its accomplishments in the 1980 election, its grasping
for political power, and its emphasis on money. Al-
though Graham believes Americans should hold to the
tradition of applying their religious convictions to pub-
lic life, he questions the specific goals and tactics of
some members of the religious right.
Another who questions what the religious right is
doing is Jim Wallis. Wallis is the editor of Sojourners,
an evangelical magazine with a liberal social and polit-
ical point of view. He is distressed by what he sees as
the religious right’s selfishness. ““The evangelical move-
ment,” Wallis says, “is presented in terms of what Je-
sus can do for me.”
 Religious Rights Versus the Religious Right 123

Criticism of another position of the religious right,

its insistence that “the Bible is God’s rule book,’’ comes
from Dr. Rockne McCarthy. McCarthy is head of the
Association for Public Justice, which studies politics
and society from a Christian standpoint. He believes
that the Bible should be used neither as a political sci-
ence or biology textbook nor as a marriage manual. Its
ancient stories, poems, proverbs, commandments, and
prophecies, however wise and beautiful, cannot be used
as literal prescriptions for national programs and inter-
national relations in the twentieth century. Instead,
McCarthy believes, ““God has told us what the great
commandments are and we must work out [their] im-
plications.”
Work out is the key phrase. Our society has changed
and we do face problems, serious problems for which
we must find solutions. The rigid, theocratic solutions
of the religious right, however, cannot fit into the
structure of our democracy. The solutions need to
come from all of us, working together under the Con-
stitution.
10. Church, State, and the Future

Separation of church and state — what does it mean in

American life?
Three hundred fifty years ago, there was one place in
the Western Hemisphere where religious dissenters
were not persecuted by the authorities of the state. In
Rhode Island, Roger Williams’s lively experiment pro-
tected men and women of all faiths.
In 1789, the lively experiment was written into the
United States Constitution. The adoption of Article VI
and the First Amendment liberated the federal govern-
ment from the rigid dogmas of the former colonies. It
made that government the government of all Ameri-
cans. Freed of religious squabbling and strife, the fed-
eral government could concentrate on unifying and
building the new nation. America flourished.
Separation also enabled America’s religions to thrive.
Since no sect was officially persecuted, nor any favored
above all others, each had the chance to seek converts
and grow strong. At first, most sects were Protestant.
But as time passed members of other religious groups
 Church, State, and the Future B25

began flooding into the country. Each group had its

own particular contribution to make to American life
and culture. Because church and state were separate,
each contribution could eventually make itself felt in
public life.
Through the years, separation continued to serve the
country well. Churches grew strong, but none came to
dominate the country politically. The wall of separa-
tion stood firm.
Yet churches have influenced American government
and politics. The abolitionist movement arose partly
out of the Second Awakening of the early nineteenth
century. Laws that protect the rights of workers, in-
cluding child-labor laws, owe a great deal to pressure
from religious groups. So do social service programs,
slum clearance projects, educational programs, and the
improved treatment of criminals and the insane. To-
day, the civil rights movement still draws much of its
leadership from among the clergy.
What of tomorrow? What will separation mean in
the future?
It will certainly mean continued arguments over the
precise meaning of the First Amendment. Accommoda-
tionists will still say that the free-exercise clause means
government ought to be doing more to help church-run
schools, hospitals, and the like. Separationists will re-
ply that the antiestablishment clause compels govern-
ment to maintain a strictly hands-off attitude toward
 ~

126 God and Government _

religious institutions. Arguments over school prayer, an

antiabortion amendment, and government attempts to
regulate religion will go on, too.
Separation also means that Americans in and out of
government will continue to act publicly on their own
moral and religious convictions. From our cathedrals
and temples, from our synagogues and meetinghouses,
will come many of the suggestions for coping with na-
tional and international problems: the nuclear arms
race, energy shortages, hunger here and abroad, social
injustice, greed, and corruption. Out of our houses of
worship will come much of the will to face such prob-
lems — and much of the inspiration to solve them.
For our Constitution and our Bill of Rights do not
forbid us to bring our religious beliefs to bear upon
affairs of state. America’s lively experiment means a
system of government that can take advantage of the
best in each faith and creed.
For Further Reading

Horowitz, Irving Louis, ed. Science, Sin, and Scholar-

ship: The Politics of Reverend Moon and the Unifica-
tion Church. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1978.

Morgan, Richard E. The Supreme Court and Religion.

New York: The Free Press, 1972.

Morgan, Richard E. The Politics of Religious Conflict.

Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1980.

Pfeffer, Leo. Church, State, and Freedom. Boston: The

Beacon Press, 1953.

Polishook, Irwin H. Roger Williams, John Cotton and

Religious Freedom: A Controversy in New and Old
England. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967.

Stokes, Anson Phelps, and Pfeffer, Leo. Church and

State in the United States. New York: Harper & Row,
1950, 1964.
Index

Abortion, 54-55, 109, 119; reduced Books, religious right’s attempt to cen-
public funding for, 76-77, 78; Su- sor, I14—15
preme Court ruling on, 7, 60-61 Born-again Christians, 105—6, 121,
Accommodationists, 125; debate be- 122
tween separationists and, over aid to Boston: Pope John Paul Il’s visit to, 5;
parochial schools, 34-44 religious intolerance in seventeenth-
American Civil Liberties Union century, I1
(ACLU), 3-4 Brainwashing, cult, 87, 91
American Jewish Congress (AJC), Bright, Bill, 107
50-51 Brooklyn College, 28
American Library Association, 114 Bryce, James, 33
American Revolution, 20, 21 Business, conflict between religion and
Anglicanism, 9, 11-12, 19-20, 22, 36 government in, 68—69, 72-73
Antiestablishment clause. See under Busing, resentment over, 67—68
First Amendment
Armstrong, Herbert W., 89, 97, 99 Calvert, George (Lord Baltimore), 19
Association for Public Justice, 123 Calvin, John, 15, 16, 17, 116
Atheists, 23, 95 Calvinism, 15, 16, 100
Campus Crusade for Christ, 107
Baker, George (Father Divine), 88 Capital punishment, 102
Bakker, Jim, 108 Carter, Jimmy, 113
Baptist church, 39, 108 Catholic church, 15-16, 89, 92,97; 0n
Baptists, 12, 40, 43 birth control, 61-62; and govern-
Bible, 56— 575 70, 104-5; on racial ment aid to parochial schools,
segregation, 68, 104; and religious 38-39, 40, 413 social service pro-
right, 109, 110, 123; Supreme Court grams of, 51, 52; tax-free property
ruling on reading of, in school, 3, owned by, 48
62-63; translation of, into English, Catholics, 22, 23,43, 50, 95, 1195
15 persecution of, in American colonies,
Bill of Rights, 26-27, 28, 29, 31, 126 12, 19, 313 prejudice against, from
Birth control, 53-54, 61-62, 77-78, religious right, 120-21; and separa-
109 tion principle, 76
Blake, Eugene Carson, 50, 51 Charities, church-run, 51-55
Blasphemy, 14, 88 Christian Broadcasting Network,
Blume, Judy, 115 106-7
 Index 129

Christian Brothers winery (California), religion and, 92-94; efforts to legis-

49-50, 96 late against, 90-91, 94-97, 98
Christianity, 92; in Roman Empire,
12-13; in United States, 33 Darwin, Charles, 40, 65
Christian schools, 64-65 Declaration of Independence, 24
Christian Science Monitor, 76 Dederich, Charles, 87-88, 90
Christian Scientists, 58—59, 80, 92-93 Delgado, Richard, 90-91, 94
Christian Voice, 108, 122 Deprogramming, 91
Church, Frank, 111, 113 Disciples of Christ, 82
Church of England, 9, 15, 17. See also Dole, Robert, 90, 91
Anglicanism Douglas, William O., 28
Church of God and True Holiness, Dutch Reformed church, 12
96
Citizens Concerned for Separation of Edwards, Jonathan, 100, 106
Church and State, 3 Eighth Amendment, 96
Civil rights movement, 117, 125 Elementary and Secondary Education
Civil War, 6 Act, 36
Cody, John Cardinal, 99 Episcopal church, 48, 50
Communist nations, US relations with, Episcopalians, 121
102-3, 105 Equal Employment Opportunity
Congregational church, 36 Commission, 73
Congregationalism, too Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), 109,
Congregationalists; 121 III, 112-13, 120
Congress, 42, 91; and federal-aid-to- Evangelism, electronic, 106-7, 111-12
education law, 35—36; laws passed Evolution, controversy over teaching
by, affecting religion, 30-31; men- creationism and, in schools, 65-66,
tion of, in First Amendment, 29-30, 5)
44
Conscientious objection to warfare, Falwell, Jerry, 107, 108, 111, 112-14
69, 72 Federal-aid-to-education bill, 35-36
Constantine (Roman emperor), 12 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
Constitution, 55, 62, 63, 90, 124; 94-95
antiestablishment clause of, 75; Bill Fehsenfeld, Del, 108
ofRights to, 26—27, 28, 29, 31, 1263 Finney, Charles G., 100, 106, 117
and death penalty, 102; drafting of, First Amendment, 58, 70-71, 95, 109,
24-26; Eighth Amendment to, 96; 124; and abortion, 55, 77; and anti-
Fourteenth Amendment to, 3 1-32; cult laws, 94; antiestablishment
ratification of, 26; and religious clause of, 26-27, 46, 52, 77, 116,
conformity among elected officials, 125-26; and birth control, 77, 78;
116; Second Amendment to, 29. See debate over, 27-32; free-exercise
also First Amendment clause of, 27, 44, 46, 50, 51,73, 1255
Constitutional Convention, 22—26, 30 and government aid to parochial
Cornwallis, Charles, 21 schools, 35, 36, 39, 44; interpreta-
Creationism, controversy over teach- tion of, in business, 72; and
ing evolution and, in schools, 65—66, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ refusal to sa-
75> 76 lute the flag, 69; separation clause of,
Cult(s), 82-86; brainwashing, 87, 91; 74; and social service programs, 51;
charges made against, 86—90; and tax exemption for churches, 47
defined, 91-92; difference between Fordham University, 98
 *
~

130 God and Government

Fourteenth Amendment, 31-32 suicide and murder, 83; People’s

Fox, Joseph Charles, 60, 78 Temple of, 82-83, 87, 94-95, 99
Franklin, Benjamin, 23-24, 45 Judaism, 92, 93
Freedom Leadership Foundation, 86
Free-exercise clause. See under First Kelley, Dean, 43-44
Amendment Kennedy, John F., 6, 35, 39
Fundamentalist churches, 39, 40 Knox, John, 15
Fundamentalists, 40-41, 65-66, 108,
121 Liberalism, religious right’s campaign
against, I11-14, 118
General Court of Massachusetts, 18 Liquor laws, 6-7
Graham, Billy, 122 Living wills, 78-79
Great Awakening, 100 Luther, Martin, 15
Guyana, 83, 87, 90, 94, 99 Lutheran church, 15, 39, 92, 97
Lutherans, 12
Hamilton, Alexander, 25
Hare Krishnas, 87, 92 McCarthy, Rockne, 123
Hemple, Thomas, 63-64, 74 McGrath, J. Howard, 28
Henry VIII, King of England, 15 Mademoiselle magazine, 115
Heresy, defined, 14 Madison, James, 23, 24, 25, 30, 333
Hill-Burton Act (1946), 52-53 Bill of Rights drafted by, 26-27, 29
Homosexuality, religious right’s views Marianist Brotherhood, 60
on, 109 Marshall, John, 48
Hoover, Herbert, 6 Marshall, Timothy, 81
Hostages, American, in Iran, 30 Mason, George, 25-26
Hubbard, L. Ron, 88—89 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Hubbard, Mrs. L. Ron, 90 Court, 75
Huss, John, 15 Mayflower, 10
Hutchinson, Anne, 11 Medical issues, religion and, 56-60
Hutson, Curtis, 120-21 Medicine, right of parents to withhold,
from sick child, 59-60, 79-80
Industry, conflict between religion and Mennonites, 22
government in, 68—69 Mercy killings, 60, 79
Intolerance, religious: in early Ameri- Methodist church, 97, 98
can colonies, 10-12, 16—20; in Mohammedans, 23
Europe, 13-16 Moon, Sun Myung, 84-86, 88, 93-94,
29
Jefferson, Thomas, 26, 29, 30 “Moonies,” 84-86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93
Jehovah’s Witnesses, 48, 56-57, 58, Moral Majority, 108, 109, 112-13,
72-73, 80, 81; refusal of, to salute io, 022
the flag, 69, 72 Morgan, Richard E., 40
Jews, 22, 23, 31, 43, 953 persecution Mormon church, 48, 80, 93
of, in American colonies, 12, 19; Mormonism, 93
prejudice against, from religious
right, 119-20, 121 National Association for the Ad-
John Paul II, Pope, 5 vancement of Colored People, 43
Johnson, Lyndon B., 35 National Council of Churches, 43, 50,
Jones, Jim, 88, 90, 96, 99; and mass oF,
 index “ana

Nazi Holocaust, 120 Rebekah Home for Girls (Corpus

New Jersey Supreme Court, 2-3 Christi, Texas), 66-67, 74
Red Cross, 45
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, high-school Reed, Eugene T., 43-44
football team, 62 Rehnquist, William H., 28
Oberlin College, roo Religious right, 107-8; aims of,
Ocean Grove, New Jersey, Sunday 109—11; book-censoring by,
rules in, 1-3 114-15; campaign of, against
O’Neill, James M., 28 liberalism, 111-14, 118; church-
state envisioned by, 116; critics of,
Paganism, 12, 13 I16—19, 121-23; on pornography,
Parochial schools, 64, 74, 95; debate 114; prejudice and bigotry among,
between separationists and accom- 119-21; preoccupation of, with
modationists on aid to, 34-44; military affairs, ro9—10, 121
defined, 38 Revival, religious (1980s), roo—ror,
Patterson, Ben, 114 104-7, 121. See also Religious right
Paul, St., 104 Right-to-die issue, 56-60, 78-79
Penn, William, 19 Roberts, Oral, 107
Pentecostal groups, 48 Robertson, Pat, 106-7, 108
People’s Temple, 82-83, 87, 94-95,99 Robison, James, 108, 120
Phillips, Howard, 109 Roloff, Lester, 66-67, 74
Pike, James A., 50, 51 Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New
Pilgrims, 9, 10-11 York, 54-55
Pinckney, Charles, 24, 25, 30 Roth, Philip, 115
Planned Parenthood, 53
Plymouth, Massachusetts, 10, 16 St. Francis’s Catholic hospital
Polygamy, 93 (Poughkeepsie, New York), 53
Pornography, religious right’s view of, Schlafly, Phyllis, 120-21
114 Scientology, Church of, 88-89, 90, 93
Postal Service, 49 Second Amendment, 29
Prayer, school, 109; Supreme Court Second Awakening, roo, 117, 125
ruling on, 3, 62-63 Segregation academies, 68, 74
Presbyterian church, 97, 98 Separationists, 55, 125-26; debate
Presbyterianism, 15 between accommodationists and,
Private schools, 64; public support for, over aid to parochial schools, 3 4-44
41-42; racial segregation in, 73-74 Separation of church and state: first use
Procter & Gamble, 114 of term, 29; future of, 124-26; omis-
Protestant Reformation, 15 sion of, from Constitution, 27-28
Protestants, 18-19, 22, 95, I19, 124; Separatists, 9-10, 17
and church-run schools, 39; fun- Sex education, opposition of religious
damentalist born-again, 108; and right to, 109, I15
separation principle, 76 Shakespeare, William, 115
Providence, Rhode Island, 18 Smith, Alfred E., 6
Puritans, 11, 15, 16-18, 36 Smith, Bailey, 119-20
Snake-handling sects, 80-81
Quakers, 11, 12, 22, 23, 69 Social service programs, 102, 105;
church-run, 51~55; religious right’s
Racial segregation, 68, 104 view of, 109-10
Reagan, Ronald, 30, 78, 113 Sojourners, 122
$32. sindex

Southern Baptist Convention, 119 United Fund, 45

South Korean Central Intelligence United Methodist Church, Ocean
Agency, 86 Grove Camp Meeting Association
Steinbeck, John, 114 Ge, 2
Stuyvesant, Peter, 12 United Nations, 103
Supreme Court, United States, 7, 28, U.S. News and World Report, 83-84
32, 42, 75, 80; on abortion, 7,
60-61; on death penalty, 102; on Vietnam War, 6, 117
Jehovah’s Witnesses, 72-73; on Voice of the Nazarene Association of
school prayer, 3, 62-63 Independent Churches, 69-70
Synanon, 87-88, 90 Voucher plan, for public financing of
Synar, Michael L., 118 private schools, 42, 43

Tax credits, to parents of private- Wallis, Jim, 122-23

school children, 42, 43 Washington, George, 26, 110
Tax exemptions, for churches, 45-51, Washington, University of, 90
98 Welfare, church, 51-55
Ten Commandments, displayed in Wicca, cult of, 92
classrooms, 63, 75-76 Williams, Charles, 56-58, 81
Theocracy, 17, 1163; defined, 16 Williams, Roger, 16-18, 124
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 33 Wills, living, 78-79
Tolerance, liberty vs., 23 Worldwide Church of God, 89, 96-97
Truman, Harry S., 28 Wyclif, John, 15

Unification Church (““Moonies’’), York, Duke of, 18-19

84-86,
88, 89, 93-94
Unitarians, 19, 121 Zone, Richard, 108, 110
 TELLTALE ALLE ALLL
i hme eth

82-1035. |
2 Weiss, Ann E. |
Mpo
God and government
Ann E. Weiss has written over a dozen books
and won several awards. The School on Madi-
son Avenue: Advertising and What It Teaches
was recently included on the CBC-NCSS
Notable Children’s Trade Books in the Field of
Social Studies list. And her book Tune In, Tune
Out: Broadcasting Regulation in the United
States has received the following praise:
“Broad coverage, with an excellent history
and overview of the whole broadcasting
industry. Complex subjects such as censor-
ship, deregulation, and the ratings system are
explained in clear, understandable language.”
—Booklist

“With excellent detail and extensive facts, this

is a valuable source material . . . The style is
lucid and informative, and the information is
well organized, flowing smoothly and coher-
ently to the last two chapters, where provoca-
tive questions arise concerning the future of
wireless communications.”
—School Library Journal

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY © 1982

 Union Grove High School
322 WEl
Weiss, Ann E. 1943- God And Government the separe

A T 20577